Hackamore 03 : Fancy Dan
by StarryDiadem
Summary: Scott gets an invitation, and sets off on a journey across a continent. Extended tag to the pilot, the High Riders.
1. Chapter 1

For Dad.

28 June 1931 – 12 May 2009

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"I haven't seen you this enthusiastic about anything for some considerable time, Scotty."

Scott started at the unexpected sound of his grandfather's voice. The big library table was covered in the guidebooks, maps and printed timetables in which he'd been absorbed for... he glanced at the black marble mantel clock with the ornate face held up by demure bronze nymphs, and was surprised to see he'd been lost in the enjoyable task of planning a journey for almost three hours.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said, getting politely to his feet. "I didn't hear you come in."

"No," agreed Harlan Garrett, "I don't suppose you did. Sit down, my boy, sit down."

Scott obeyed, once he'd pulled out a chair and waited for his grandfather to join him. He watched for a moment as the old man turned over the maps and papers, admiring, as he usually did, the precision in the touch of those fine, patrician hands. He was proud of inheriting the Garrett hands, come to him through his mother along with his dusty blond hair and the typically narrow Garrett face with its high cheekbones.

He wasn't certain what traits he might have inherited from his father since he'd never met the man. He'd never met his mother, either, of course, but at least he had her portraits to go by.

It was more than Murdoch Lancer had ever granted him.

"I don't know that I'm enthusiastic, exactly, Grandfather," he said, responding to Harlan's greeting. "Intrigued, perhaps."

His grandfather picked up _The Traveler's Own Book: A Panorama of Overland Travel, from Chicago to San Francisco,_ carefully unfolding the long thin map inside its covers. Harlan's bright grey-blue eyes were still as sharp as those of a man forty years his junior: he examined the fine print without any sign of strain.

"I suppose I would be intrigued too," he acknowledged, refolding the map and putting down the book before allowing his mouth to twist slightly into a moue of distaste. "I would be very intrigued as to why, after twenty-five years of silence and neglect, my father suddenly wanted to see me. I think, Scotty, that I would be very intrigued and very suspicious."

"Suspicious? Well, yes, something has obviously happened to make him decide to invite me to California." Scott added wryly: "Something cataclysmic, I dare say, for him to bother."

"You mentioned that the Pinkerton agent assured you that the man wasn't dying," said Harlan, his tone acidic. "Perhaps that's just as well. A deathbed reconciliation scene would be rather too like a cheap novel; an experience to be avoided, I suggest."

Scott laughed. "I can't imagine anything more unlikely, or more uncomfortable! But you're quite right, grandfather, the agent did refuse to elaborate on the reason for the invitation. I can't imagine why he's sent for me now. He must want my help with something."

"It could be anything, I suppose," said Harlan. "But I doubt if it's anything good. California is a barbarous place. The west is lawless and savage. He's survived it this long, however."

Scott's lips twitched as he hid a smile at the implication that his absentee father was as lawless and savage as the land he lived in. He wasn't surprised at the tone; his grandfather's animus against the land and the man who, in Harlan's opinion, had stolen his daughter at the cost of her life, was still bitter-sharp more than twenty-five years later. "Well, whatever it is, he's serious about the invitation. As I told you, sir, the Pinkerton agent explained that he is willing to offer me a thousand dollars for the privilege of an hour of my time."

It was unlikely that a refined Bostonian gentleman was even physiologically capable of snorting derisively, but Harlan Garret made a sound that was suspiciously like it. "Scotty, that's barely half-a-year's salary for you in the business—or would be, if you would apply yourself—and you know it. You can't want the money!"

Scott ignored the criticism, mild as it was; he did well enough in the business to get by and that took all his energy and enthusiasm. "No sir, of course not. I have more than enough to live comfortably. It's just that I remember what you've always said about the squalid and uncivilised place to which he took my mother. From everything I've read, the West still seems very primitive. I assume it's a sort of hand-to-mouth existence out there."

"He took her to a ruined mud-walled house, Scotty; a mud hut, a hovel! My poor Catherine, labouring on the land like a peasant!"

"I know, sir," said Scott, patiently listening to the old complaint.

When Scott had been a child, one of his grandfather's visitors had given him _Robinson Crusoe_ for his birthday; a handsomely bound book with an embossed blue cover and gilt-edged pages and the most wonderful woodcuts of Crusoe and Man Friday. He'd been a little young to appreciate it when he'd first got it—he'd been five, he thought; perhaps six, at most—but he'd learned to love the book as he grew older. He had imagined his father living like Robinson Crusoe in a mud hut roofed with palm fronds and surrounded by savages. He'd look around the big house on Beacon Hill where he and his grandfather lived, and wonder if his father's mud hut had furniture and if it were like the crimson velvet sofas and chairs that he sat on, and if his father looked like the pictures in the book, big and bearded and dressed in animal skins. He had been quite old, fourteen at least, before he realised that the mud-walled hovel of his grandfather's complaints could be translated, possibly more accurately, into an adobe-built Mexican-inspired house, size and condition unknown.

Still, even knowing that Harlan's view was a little prejudiced, Scott had always assumed that abject poverty had prevented Murdoch Lancer from coming to see him or claim him. The same excuse didn't quite hold true for the silence, of course, and Scott had never understood why his father had never tried to contact him at all, since the poorest man should be able to afford to send one or two letters over twenty-five years if he saved hard enough to pay the postage. When he'd been a child he'd watched every delivery of letters for something from his father, had looked at every visitor to see if this was the one who'd catch him up in a pair of arms while a voice choked out _My son! Scott!_ in his ear. Scott wasn't sure how old he'd been when he'd put aside that silly childish fancy and taken a more mature and thoughtful view of Murdoch Lancer's silence and neglect; perhaps the same age that he'd realised that his father's mud hut may not really be Robinson Crusoe's.

While not forgiving it, Scott had tried to rationalise his abandonment: he had everything in Boston and Murdoch Lancer had nothing in California, half a world away. The offer of a thousand dollars and his expenses gave him pause, though. A poor man labouring on the land couldn't offer that.

He filed the thought away to be considered when he was alone and added, mildly enough, "It seems to me that in those circumstances, one thousand dollars must represent a great deal to him and perhaps he's had to sacrifice a lot to amass that kind of money. If he's willing to offer so much to get me to go there ... well, it adds to the intrigue."

Again the almost-snort. "Well, he could hardly appeal to you on any grounds other than financial! There are no ties between you, other than blood. He abdicated all responsibility as your father long ago when he abandoned the... when, forgive me, Scotty, when he abandoned you."

"I know, sir." Scott poked at the heap of maps, and said, suddenly tired enough to be honest, "Still, it's come at a time when I think I'd like to get away from Boston for a little while."

"Why?" asked the old man, sharply.

Scott didn't shrug, because such an uncouth action would certainly have met with a reproof, but he did allow his shoulders to relax. At any other time his grandfather would have called attention to his ungentlemanly slumping, but he knew that whenever he displayed the world-weariness that had plagued him since the War, Harlan's tolerance levels rose. He was a little ashamed that he sometimes made use of the seldom-expressed, but evident, sympathy and affection.

"It's never really been the same, sir," he said, and looked away, afraid that his face would show just how far from 'the same' Boston had been since his return.

Harlan returned to looking over the traveller's detritus that Scott had strewn over the table, letting the silence lie between them for a moment or two before responding. "If it means that you don't marry Barbara Llewellyn out of sheer ennui, then you may have some time away from Boston with my blessing. Why don't you think about a trip to Europe? I intended to send you there when you finished Harvard but... well, you know."

Scott did indeed know. He'd not been able to return to Harvard to finish his degree for a couple of years after coming home from the War, and his grandfather, thoroughly frightened by the time it had taken for Scott to regain his health and by the thought of how nearly he'd lost him, had been unwilling to let him out of his sight to go so far as, say, New York, much less the Old World. Scott had never summoned up enough energy to care about the coddling, much less protest. This volte-face by his grandfather was surprising.

All he said now was, "I have no intention of marrying Barbara."

"Walter Llewellyn spoke to me at the Club today, when I went there to lunch. He was rather agitated. He claimed that he almost caught you in her room last night."

"Almost is not quite," said Scott. "He can't be certain who it was."

Harlan shook his head and said, reproachfully, "Scotty!"

"Did you imagine that she's an innocent, sir? I wouldn't say this to anyone other than you, of course, but Barbara knows how the game is played."

"As does Walter Llewellyn, but he's determined that it's a game you won't play with his daughter."

"If not I, there'll be someone else within the week," said Scott.

"That is not very gallant, young man."

"I'm sorry, sir, if you find that a little too candid. I don't mean to impugn Barbara or her reputation, but it is the truth. I don't seduce innocents, grandfather. I'm not a cad."

"Llewellyn seems to think you're a libertine, however. He's taking steps to rescue her reputation, such as it is. He has banned Barbara from seeing you again." Harlan peered at him, eyes bright and sharp. "Well, I'll admit that I'm relieved that you don't seem heartbroken by that."

"Barbara's an amusing diversion, sir, as I am for her. It isn't serious. Barbara's far too clever to allow it to be serious or to admit to anything indiscreet. As I said, she's played the game too long for that and she knows when to weep and tremble and claim ignorance about what her father's talking about and bamboozle him." He added, wryly, "She gave a splendid performance last night, from what I could hear from the shrubbery."

It earned him a stern look. "Llewellyn was talking about horsewhips, Scotty! You have got to stop being so foolish and taking such risks."

Scott nodded, but he knew that at least these little risks made him feel, for a few minutes, as if he were awake again.

"I was able to—" His grandfather paused then nodded as he found the right word, "—to placate him."

Scott glanced at Harlan, seeing the slight curl of the lip and the half-smile. "Placate him, sir?"

"His business interests and mine intersect, here and there."

"Ah," said Scott. "Of course."

"He is quite serious about ending the connection and I don't disagree with him. Really, my boy, you just cannot play that game with women of our class." Harlan waved a dismissive hand. "Not that the Llewellyns are quite of our class, of course, but you know what I mean. You can't buy off the Llewellyn girl in the way you might a scullery maid, despite her having the morals of one."

"I think you wrong the scullery maid, sir, whose behaviour has always seemed to me to be beyond reproach. But Barbara's morals are no worse than mine, surely?"

"That's very different," said Harlan. "I expect any man your age to have his adventures with the immorata, but one doesn't marry such a girl, naturally."

"Naturally," agreed Scott.

It earned him a sharp look. His grandfather sat for a while, frowning, tapping his long white fingers on his knee. Harlan fixed his eyes on the portrait of his daughter above the mantelpiece; Scott followed his gaze. Catherine Laura Garrett Lancer stared back with the same pretty indifference with which her portrait had always regarded the living, whether it be her father or the son she'd died birthing.

"The Pinkerton agent you spoke of at breakfast this morning—I assume he accosted you after that little romantic interlude?"

"Yes, sir." .

Harlan continued with the frowning and the finger-tapping. Scott eyed this evidence of perturbation with a little surprise at how obviously affected his grandfather was. Harlan's reaction to the message from Murdoch Lancer had been predictably acerbic, but his behaviour now spoke of deep distress or anxiety. After his initial surprise, Harlan hadn't said a great deal at breakfast, but this early return home and the barely-concealed agitation suggested that Harlan invested the message with a greater significance than he'd first revealed.

I'll speak plainly, Scotty," said Harlan at last. "There's no denying that you haven't really found your way since the War ended, but it's almost five years and I think I've been patient long enough, don't you?"

Startled, Scott met the cool, clear-eyed gaze. "You've been very patient," he acknowledged. "And very supportive. I couldn't ask for more, sir. It's just... it's just that everything has seemed so unimportant and paltry since... since Libby. I can't explain it—"

Harlan's hand closed briefly over his. "I know, my dear boy. I know. You don't need to explain it. You were ill for such a long time afterwards. I've watched you struggle with it and I've regretted that I've not been able to do more. And perhaps my foolish fears have kept you back. I couldn't bear to lose you, you know and I was very afraid that I would."

Scott was touched at this unexpectedly honest avowal. "Even after I got home?"

"Do you know, Scotty, I've sometimes wondered if you've ever let yourself believe that you are truly home."

This hit so true in the mark, that Scott drew a sharp breath. "I have tried, sir."

"I know. And forgive me, my boy, for mentioning this, but the added grief of Julie calling off your marriage—"

"She didn't have your patience, sir. And really, she isn't to be blamed for that. It wasn't right to ask her to take on so much; she's entitled to so much better."

This time there was no mistaking the snort. "Indeed? Well, that's over and done with, but there's no denying that you're drifting badly."

"Oh," said Scott, rather blankly. He felt slightly offended. It was an ungenerous analysis, he felt; his life was no different to that of many another of his age and class.

"It's not a criticism. I can't truly understand how your experiences affected you, although I've tried—"

"No-one could have tried harder, sir."

"Thank you, my boy, but I couldn't do less. You know that."

Scott nodded. He did know that.

"So, I would be happy to send you to Europe, if that would help give you more time, in a different place, to find yourself again. I'd rather like my boy back, Scotty, and not the polite stranger who's been living in your clothes these last five years."

A part of Scott wanted to squirm with embarrassment and mutter something brash and fashionably cynical about old men giving way to sentimentality being a sign of their dotage. The other part, possibly the better half of him, had to clear its throat and felt a slight difficulty in speaking, and when he did speak, it wasn't just about the offer to fund his travel. "You're very kind, Grandfather."

"Nonsense. It's for purely selfish reasons." He patted Scott's hand. "I look after my own, you know."

Scott glanced down to focus on the _Traveler's Own Book_—by Alfred A Hart, showing, by a system _new and comprehensive_, all the minutiae of railway travel and all interesting points and illustrated by fine photochromic views—and took a moment to respond, steeling himself to match his grandfather's directness. Perhaps five or six years ago, the prospect of a trip to Europe would have been exciting and energising; now it left him as indifferent as the thought of staying in Boston.

"Do you know, sir, although it is most extraordinarily kind of you to offer, the thought of going to Europe really doesn't intrigue me nearly as much as going to California. I think I would like to accept Murdoch Lancer's invitation, after all."

"I don't think that's wise."

"I don't see it quite like that, sir. I don't think it's unwise. I think it's time. Actually, sir, it's high time that I met him. He is my father, after all, and I have the right to ask him a few questions."

"What is there to ask, Scotty? He took your mother to that barbarous place and couldn't keep her safe. I doubt there was a doctor within a couple of hundred miles when she needed one. He wasn't even there when she die… when you were born. What more do you need to know?"

"Why," said Scott. "With respect, sir, and with deep gratitude for all your care of me, don't you think he had some duty towards me? I want to know why he handed that to you without so much as a backwards glance."

"The land was too important for him to keep Catherine with him, or bother himself with you," said Harlan. "Don't expect to get a satisfactory answer."

"Oh, I agree that there can't be one, but I'd like to see him face to face and ask." Scott smiled slightly. "And it appears that he might have something to say to me, after all, if the thousand dollar sweetener is any indication."

Harlan stood abruptly and went to stand at the mantel, his eyes on his painted daughter. Scott watched him. Harlan was silent for a long time before he nodded.

"I suppose that your curiosity is only to be expected. You never showed much about him when you were a child."

"I felt it, sir," said Scott. "When I saw the other boys with their fathers, then I wondered. But I know who brought me up when my father didn't bother to take that trouble." He added, gently, "I know where my loyalties lie, sir."

"Oh, I don't doubt that for a moment!" said his grandfather. "But that barbaric land took your mother from me, and I can't help but be concerned. He has to want something from you, Scotty. He's had no interest in you all these years and I just don't believe that he'd have such a radical change of heart without some compelling reason. I just don't believe it's a good reason."

"It will probably make for an interesting account when I return home," said Scott and watched as his grandfather relaxed at that reassurance. "It will only be for a few weeks, grandfather."

Harlan's gaze, surprisingly intense, met Scott's. Scott nodded at him in reassurance and let the silence lengthen, allowing the old man the time to accept his decision.

Harlan sighed audibly. "I won't deny that I was rather expecting this, after you told me about the Pinkerton agent. I'm not happy about it, for all the reasons I've given you. Remember that he's abandoned you for more than twenty-five years!"

"I remember," said Scott. "I won't ever forget that, sir, nor what I owe to you." He smiled at his grandfather with real affection. "I want to meet him, grandfather. I want to ask him, face to face, why he gave me up to you without a second thought. I think I have the right to demand an answer from him."

"No-one has a better right." Harlan hesitated. "We've never really talked much about that time, but you know that I fought very hard to keep you here with me."

"Did you, sir? Well, that doesn't surprise me and it looks as if he surrendered without putting up much of a defence and he's never, in these years, contacted me until yesterday. I want to know why."

Another long silence before his grandfather nodded. "Very well, Scotty; very well. It may be for the best, if it's giving you an interest in things again." Harlan took a deep breath and said, more briskly. "It may even be useful to the firm, you going to California. Arthur Campion was saying to me only yesterday that there's a wealth of exciting business opportunities in San Francisco and Sacramento that are worth investigation. Perhaps you could look into that for me while you're out there?"

"Of course," said Scott.

He was surprised by his grandfather's manner. The man who had built one of the most successful business empires in Boston and the Commonwealth was rarely so maladroit and clumsy. Harlan had a shrewd intelligence, a great deal of subtlety and a carefully-nuanced ruthlessness, all masked by civility and courtesy – as Walter Llewellyn could doubtless attest, after having been 'placated'. This patent and rather ham-fisted face-saver showed just how rattled his grandfather was by Murdoch Lancer's unexpected message. Scott was relieved, however, that there was so little real opposition and wondered if he had worn out his grandfather's patient acceptance of his post-War lassitude.

He added, fired with the same interest that had kept him absorbed for most of the afternoon: "I've worked out a route to Sacramento by the new railroad, and then thought about making my way south by stagecoach. Morro Coyo seems to be around two or three days by stage."

"Morro Coyo!" said Harlan, rather dismissively. He retreated to his armchair by the fire and shook open the newspaper awaiting him there. "Heathenish name for a place."

"Spanish, of course," said Scott. He smiled, enjoying the way that the exotic Spanish name of the town where his unknown father lived rolled off his tongue, and for an instant, his heart beat a little more energetically as unaccustomed excitement gripped him. "As are the majority of the place names. I wonder what it means? Anyhow, it's easy enough to go on to San Francisco and I'd very much like to see the city."

Harlan's smile was a thin and frosty thing. "And since he isn't dying, there's no reason for you not to stay in the city for a few days and explore it."

"None at all." Scott added, thoughtfully, "Although, despite not having been given a reason for undue haste, I don't think he would have sent a Pinkerton agent unless there is some urgency to his request. I have one or two engagements that will be difficult to break, but I could leave next week."

His grandfather merely made that not-quite-snorting noise again, and Scott, deciding that discretion was definitely the better part for the moment, especially when he'd won a major battle with barely firing a shot, lost himself again for a few minutes in the pleasures of maps and timetable and schedules.

"I have it, sir. If once your business in San Francisco is concluded and I backtrack to a town called Stockton, I can then take the stage south as I originally planned. I don't have to go all the way back to Sacramento. I should reach Morro Coyo with very little in the way of extra time and effort, and I'll be very happy to carry out whatever commissions you or Mister Campion have for me."

"A stage coach," remarked his grandfather, "is the invention of Satan to be a special purgatory for the very sinful."

Scott laughed. "Have you ever travelled on a public stage coach, sir?"

"Once. After that experience, I gave in to your grandmother's wheedling and bought the travelling carriage. It made me very popular with her, I assure you."

Scott had been brought home in that same carriage after the war, so sick, emaciated and covered in sores that he barely remembered the journey except as an endless haze of pain and fever and his grandfather's soothing, calm voice and cool, capable hands; but the carriage had made his return home so much more comfortable than if he'd waited for official transport, that he could understand his grandmother's delight.

"I'm sure it did, sir!" He added the obligatory: "I wish I remembered her better. She was a remarkable lady, but I'll have to hope that my wife, if I marry, is content with something less elaborate." Scott flourished a timetable at his grandfather. "I don't think that I'll be able to avoid some stage travel on this journey, however."

"What route do you intend to take?"

"I'll go to Buffalo, and from there to Chicago. I'd rather that than waste time going to New York. What I might gain in a faster train journey from New York to Chicago, I'd more than lose by having to travel to New York first."

"Not to mention having to travel with hundreds of immigrants," said Harlan.

Scott hid a smile, suspecting he wasn't the only one who had whiled away an hour or two with the guidebooks and maps; his grandfather's club, he remembered, had an extensive library. "I don't mind that so much, sir. But still, I might as well go direct to Buffalo and join the New York-Chicago train there. There are daily trains from Chicago to San Francisco. It will take about a week all told, which is quite astonishingly quick, don't you think?"

"I think it will be quite astonishingly uncomfortable," said Harlan, peering at him over the top of the newspaper. "Although you will be travelling first class, of course."

"Of course. The guide books say that the Transcontinental Express is very well appointed, actually, with every comfort."

Harlan merely sniffed and shook out the folds of his newspaper. Scott didn't think that his grandfather was actually reading it.

Scott glanced down at the timetable and tariff sheet. "My... Murdoch Lancer is paying my expenses, as well as offering me the one thousand dollars. A two-way ticket to San Francisco alone is more than three hundred dollars."

"Scandalous," said his grandfather, placidly.

Scott's mouth twitched at the tone. "I take it that you have shares in the railroads, Grandfather."

"Of course. I have a considerable investment there. So do you."

"I do? Then perhaps I should ask for a discount? They already offer some: this timetable for Central Pacific Railroad shows that the fare is lower if paid in coin, not currency."

"Well, would you put your trust in some fly-by-night Californian bank, or in gold and silver?" Harlan did snort this time, but he was talking about gold and good business practice and that made even a Boston Brahmin think about practicalities and exercise due diligence. "You might bear that in mind when you come to collect your thousand dollars, Scotty."

Scott smiled at the old man with real affection. "Don't worry, Grandfather. I'll demand it in gold and take an empty carpet bag to carry it."

Harlan smiled back at him, thinly, and Scott realised that the old man may have been reconciled to his trip west, had even seemed to be unsurprised that Scott had decided on it, but he didn't like it. Harlan didn't like it one bit. "Just take good care of it, and yourself, on the way back, my dear boy. You had better take your revolver, by the way. I hear that there are all sorts of brigands and gunmen and train-robbers out there."

"Train robbers? Good lord," said Scott, "Who would be mad enough to rob a vehicle moving at twenty-five miles an hour or more?"

"I believe," said his grandfather, "that the local term is _desperadoes_."

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tbc


	2. Chapter 2

**Hackamore 2 : Fancy Dan Part 2**

Travel Itinerary  
Boston to Morro Coyo, California  
March/April 1870

**  
Day One, Wednesday 23 March - Day Two, Thursday 24 March**

_Boston – Albany – Buffalo – Chicago New York Central and Hudson River Railroad  
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When Scott finalised his itinerary, the Pinkerton agent telegraphed the projected travel plans to Murdoch Lancer in California, and gave Scott an address to telegraph when he was ready to confirm his arrival date and time.

Scott raised an eyebrow. "Who is Doctor Samuel Jenkins of Green River, may I ask, and why am I sending my telegrams to him and not direct to my… to Mister Lancer?"

But all the Pinkerton man would say that the circumstances demanded this strange level of subterfuge and that he wasn't at liberty to explain. Indeed, he was under express instructions not to explain: Mr Lancer wished to do so when he saw his son.

Puzzled, Scott spent an hour or two seriously reconsidering his decision to go to California. Murdoch Lancer had been silent for twenty-five years, and even now the man would only communicate through intermediaries. It didn't bode well for their interview. Scott wondered if the journey would be worth it. He wondered if he'd ever get an explanation from Murdoch Lancer or answers to the questions he had, those myriad variants on _Why did you abandon me?_

In the end, he decided not to draw back, but his expectations—never high—were lowered accordingly. His father was proving even more enigmatic now that contact (of sorts) had been made than he had been when he was silent.

His grandfather gave him a very speaking look when Scott told him of this latest development.

"All the agent would say was that my father has his reasons for this roundabout means of communication, and that he will explain when he sees me face to face."

"If the novelty of that doesn't rob him of speech," said Harlan, waspish to the last. "I was right to be suspicious. There's something havey-cavey going on, Scotty. Mark my words."

"At least you have words, sir. That seems to be rather more than Murdoch Lancer can admit to."

Harlan smiled at that, but it was mirthless.

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Scott's last evening in what his grandfather persisted in calling the 'civilisation of the East', involved a sumptuous supper for two ("I believe that they subsist on beef jerky, in the West. Eat up, Scotty, this is likely to be the last decent dinner you get until you come home.") followed by a short sleep in his own comfortable bed ("It may be that Murdoch Lancer is no longer living in the ruined mud hut to which he took your mother—he may at least had had it roofed by this time, I suppose—but I'm not sanguine about the comfort you'll find there. Sleep well, my boy.") and he started his journey by breakfasting on beefsteak, kidneys and devilled eggs ("I've asked Mrs Reynolds to put up a hamper for you, so you'll have enough decent food for a day or two, at least.").

Despite the appallingly early start, his grandfather went with him to the station to make his final farewells, and solemnly shook hands before Scott boarded the train. There was no embrace and little obvious emotion other than the tightening of Harlan's hand in Scott's and the patent sincerity of his quiet _Come home soon, Scotty._ Scott's last sighting of him as the train pulled out on the stroke of five, was his upright figure; not waving, merely watching. Harlan raised one hand in farewell as the train gathered speed and then Scott lost sight of him altogether. He knew that Harlan would stand watching the train until there would be nothing to see but an empty line stretching out across a continent.

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Scott settled himself into the parlour carriage with its comfortable armchairs set at the windows or around a closed stove. The stove—needed to take the chill from a typically raw Spring dawn—had already been claimed by a merchant who was apparently going to Buffalo on business and taking his family for a vacation. Scott was happy enough to sink into a comfortable chair by a window, and take stock of himself and try and work out what his real expectations were.

He'd not slept well. For much of the night, Scott's dreams had been of very tall, broad men who'd towered over him, as if he were a small child again, and deep voices that said, gently, _So, you're Scott, are you? _ He'd looked up, straining to see through the dim light, but always before he could see what Murdoch Lancer looked like, and how Murdoch Lancer looked when he was greeting his son for the first time, the owner of the tall, broad figure and the deep voice turned away into the darkness.

Over and over, until the butler had knocked softly on his door in the cold, predawn darkness.

He'd said nothing to his grandfather about the dreams, as he'd never said anything about his childhood fantasies. He knew the dreams were to be expected. His doctors had said so when he came back from Libby; that in dreams our troubled spirits seek the answers they couldn't find awake. Scott wasn't entirely sure that he had a troubled spirit, but he did have a lot of questions. At the very least, he could use the journey to think about the coming reunion, and work out what he would ask before taking his promised thousand dollars and turning back for home.

But he had little opportunity to indulge in introspection. It would have been a pleasant journey across the New England farmlands but for the mercantile child, who needed more discipline than his doting parents seemed able to give him. Scott was not an ardent worshipper at the altar of childhood innocence and found the lisp all too easy to resist, but the child was a persistent little demon. The boy showed a flattering desire for Scott's attention, coming to lean often against Scott's knee to stroke his sleeve and ask for a story. Scott hoped that the jam could be sponged from the jacket of his travelling suit: it was one of Brooks Brothers' more successful creations and he was particularly taken with the burgundy velvet trim.

The conductor, thankfully, was able to save the day. And the jacket.

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**Day Three Friday 24 March**  
_  
Chicago – Council Bluffs (Omaha)Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad_

Scott met Charles Nordhoff over dinner, after a day travelling south-west from Chicago. The CRIP Railroad dining car was crowded, and the conductor had no compunction about forcing two gentlemen travelling alone to share a table, creating enough room at neighbouring tables for a family so numerous that Scott stopped counting. He was only grateful that the conductor didn't gift him with the overflow children as well. If nothing else, it preserved his suit from further damage.

Nordhoff was considerably older than Scott (about forty, Scott thought), stocky and dark-haired, with a neatly trimmed beard half-obscuring the high colour in his cheeks that suggested good living, and bright, intelligent eyes. He introduced himself with a hearty handshake and the observation, in very slightly accented English, that "At Chicago, the journey to California really begins."

"Do you think so?" Scott welcomed the distraction from the horror of family life and added, as he accepted the proffered hand: "Scott Lancer, of Boston, sir."

"And a bachelor," Nordhoff guessed.

Scott gave a nod towards the large family. "And likely to remain one, if that's the alternative."

Nordhoff laughed. "It doesn't have to be so... so very numerous! But why challenge my little aphorism about Chicago?"

"I'd have thought Council Bluffs was better qualified, myself. At the moment we appear to be heading south as much as west."

"Doesn't trip so easily from the tongue," protested his new acquaintance, his dark, expressive face crinkling with amusement. He took off his rimless spectacles, and folded them into his breast pocket, putting aside the magazine he had been looking at before Scott had been shown to his table. "There's something very unpleasing about the words. Council. Bluffs. No. Not quite the right rhythm to it. I like my words to flow and dance, Mister Lancer."

Scott, who didn't feel that the word 'Chicago' was that much more pleasing to the ear, just smiled. "Then you must be a writer, sir."

Nordhoff, it appeared, was a journalist. He worked for the New York Evening Post and for Harper's Monthly Magazine and, like many of his profession, was an aspiring novelist. Scott admitted to being a subscriber and that he had the latest edition of Harper's in his valise.

"Nothing of mine in there this month," said Nordhoff. "But I've got an article on the history of lace in Harper's Bazar."

"Lace," repeated Scott, wondering whether he should smile or not.

Nordhoff himself was cheerfully brisk about it. "Such are the varied experiences of the journalistic life, sir. Lace is very important to the ladies and the article was a great success. Your wife, if we hadn't just established your reluctance to commit to matrimony, would certainly be reading it."

"I'm sure she would," said Scott, rather fascinated. "And if I ever do marry, I'll make sure of it. I take it that a journalist has to be able to turn his pen to any subject?"

"Indeed, yes," said Nordhoff, and the ensuing discussion led them by a winding route to Great Literature—Scott could almost see the capitals being sketched in the air as Nordhoff spoke—at which point Scott revealed that he had had read and admired Goethe while at Harvard.

"I'm devoutly Germanic when it comes to Goethe, Mister Lancer, although, I'm staunchly American on everything else," said Nordhoff, delighted, and toasted Scott in appreciation. "You're an educated man, sir, and it's a privilege to make your acquaintance."

Scott laughed and by the time that they'd agreed that perhaps Great Britain's Mr Dickens took the modern palm (if one forgave the monstrous injustice done to the United States by _Martin Chuzzlewit_), they found that they had a lot in common despite the difference in age. Scott thought that Nordhoff would make an amusing and sympathetic travelling companion.

Nordhoff was researching a series of articles for Harper's, extolling the virtues of the new Great Transcontinental route and promoting the idea of travelling it for pleasure on family vacations. Scott felt that the ticket prices may have to be adjusted before many families could afford to take Nordhoff's travel advice, although there were obvious exceptions and he looked pointedly at the large family at the nearby tables as he spoke.

"You have a point," conceded Nordhoff, "Despite my brief, I have had to leave Missus Nordhoff and the young Nordhoffs at home in New York—the expenses not running to a family outing—although between you, me and that all too numerous family over there, I am relishing the prospect of a short break from domesticity." He looked at his wineglass and smiled. "I don't mind admitting, Lancer, that Missus Nordhoff has a fine, almost operatic talent for vocalising her disappointment at being left behind, and I can't say that I blame her. This is quite an adventure we're embarking on and it will be all the better for your congenial company."

But he said that when Scott shared his bottle of champagne, and Scott was of the opinion that free champagne would make anyone appear to be congenial.

"Do you travel for business, pleasure or family?" asked Nordhoff, adding rather belatedly, "If you will forgive my curiosity."

Scott hesitated, but he was both used to and adept at these superficial, surface conversations that kept him safely distanced. There was no harm in the question, after all. He admitted to all three reasons, and Nordhoff, perhaps unsurprisingly from what little Scott had seen of him, focused on the latter two.

"They'll be delighted to be reunited with you, of course," said Nordhoff, making the assumption about Scott's family connexions with such bright good humour that Scott couldn't be offended. "And grateful for this wonderful form of transportation that will get you to them all the sooner. The railroads will, I'm sure, be the remarkable tool for reuniting with loved ones separated from us by our mighty continent—"

_The man talks like a book_, thought Scott, suddenly tired. He guessed though that beneath the florid language and the professional bonhomie, there lurked a sharp and analytical mind. Nordhoff missed nothing, his gaze flickering around the carriage to see why a lady two tables away laughed, or to watch the low-voiced waiter conferring with the fussy, elderly gentleman at the corner table, or whatever other little tableaux caught his eye.

Scott let his mouth twist into a little sourness. "Oh, not close family," he said, coolly, interrupting Nordhoff's rhapsodising. "Not loved ones. The gentleman I'm visiting… well, I suppose that we meet on a page in the family bible, but we've never met anywhere else."

He turned his head to stare out of the window, and watched the Illinois evening flicker past. He wondered if Murdoch Lancer even had a family bible: it didn't seem likely that the man would have need of one.

.

.  
**Day Four, Saturday 26 March – Day Seven Tuesday 29 March  
**

The Great Transcontinental Railroad

_  
Omaha – Cheyenne – Laramie – Ogden Union Pacific Railroad_

_Ogden – Sacramento Central Pacific Railroad_

_Sacramento – Stockton – San FranciscoWestern Pacific Railroad_

They arrived at Council Bluffs after an early breakfast and transferred across the Missouri to Omaha. Scott was a little taken aback to find all his luggage whisked away into a large shed to be reweighed and checked before he was allowed to board the Union Pacific train.

"They'd love to charge you extra poundage," said Nordhoff, with a shrug, looking around the shed and the dozens of people crowded into it.

"I really should tell them I'm a shareholder," murmured Scott, remembering his grandfather's complaisance at the charges made by the railroads and wondering how much Harlan was profiting from the price for transporting the travellers' baggage.

Nordhoff laughed, and watched the crowds with his bright, intelligent eyes. Scott smiled and leaned against a counter, listening with only half an ear to almost as many languages as there were people, and, like his companion, enjoying the sight of so many energetic, gesticulating, flustered people. Immigrants from dozens of countries packed the platform—people whose entire lives were bound up in a few bags and valises and packs, people who had travelled halfway across the world for the chance of a new life. There were English there, and Irish, but the majority seemed to be Germans and Poles and Bohemians, with a smattering of big, blond Norsemen and even a few dark, thin Russians. There were a dozen different costumes that hinted at non-American origins, a dozen different languages, a dozen different exhortations to the excited, playful children who darted about the piles of luggage. Scott caught one little girl who tumbled over, setting her on her feet again with a smile; she laughed at him and said something to him, and his German was good enough to accept her shy thanks in her own language.

Scott continued to smile, after she'd fluttered away back to her mother. For all the confusion and fluster, these were people on their way to something new and exciting, and it showed on every tired face and in every eye. These were like the Israelites in the wilderness taking their first steps out of the desert into the Promised Land, and freedom and joy and anticipation were their travelling companions. Scott envied them.

"They all have such a lot of hope and energy," he said.

"They're on their way to a new life," said Nordhoff. "For many of them the old one has been difficult and America and the West offers them a new beginning, a vision of something better."

Scott frowned. "Yes," he said, slowly.

"In my own case, my father came from a relatively poor family in Eastern Prussia. He laboured under too many disadvantages back in the Fatherland: he was the fourth son and of his three brothers, one inherited, one went into the Army and the third became a pastor. There was nothing left for him there. Add to that a most imprudent marriage and a son – myself – to establish, then he really had no choice but to try his luck here if he was to make his fortune. He never regretted it."

"My father came from Scotland, I believe," said Scott. "I don't know why he left, but possibly the same sort of reasoning, to make his own way."

"You've never asked him?"

"I've never met the gentleman," said Scott, turning away. He caught the ticket agent's attention and, on behalf of Nordhoff and himself, got it established that they were through travellers and therefore entitled to be amongst the first to be assigned their berths. Nordhoff, despite giving him some speculative looks, was tactful enough to say nothing more on the subject of fathers, commenting instead on the hardiness of the emigrants who would sit upright for the entire journey while he and Scott travelled in a level of comfort that rivalled a drawing room.

Scott nodded and sympathised, and all while he thought that he'd rather like to know what vision had brought Murdoch Lancer to the Americas to steal away a Boston heiress for his wife. He wondered if the man would tell him. He wondered if the man would tell him anything.

.

.  
The railroad ran out of Omaha and out across more prairie. Scott, used to the rolling green hills and mountains of New England thought that the flat yellowish-green grasslands were disconcerting, stretching away to an horizon that could barely be seen.

It reminded him of sailing. Just as at sea, there was a sense of horizons that couldn't be measured, couldn't be gauged or determined, the feeling that he was setting off across something that couldn't be mapped or confined between the puny boundaries set by mere men. His parents, of course, had gone to California by ship and had missed seeing the wide American plains. He couldn't imagine their journey, although he tried; trying to envisage the pretty, delicate looking woman of the portrait coping with the privations of the long voyage and wondering if the faceless tallness that was his father was hardier, had been there for his mother to cling to, reassuring and strong in rough seas. He wondered if they'd experienced the same vulnerability while at sea, the same feeling of smallness and insignificance that the grasslands were giving him now.

"I feel a little like the ancient sailors must have felt," he said to Nordhoff, "sailing across an endless sea and worrying that they'd fall from the edge. Seeing this, I could almost believe science is wrong and that the world is flat, after all!"

Science, opined Mr Nordhoff, took all the romance and adventure from the world. Scott could only agree, astonished when Nordhoff revealed that he'd spent several years at sea before settling to a landlubber's life as a journalist.

Scott watched as the prairies passed and thought about what it must have been like thirty years before, moving across these boundless plains on a slow wagon pulled by a span of oxen or heavy draught horses, the men and women tiny and insignificant against the world they moved in. The train travelled in an hour more miles than those first explorers could travel in a day. He thought that, on the whole, the pioneers had had the best of it. There was something so very clean about the prairie then, so uncluttered and untouched by man. Every day they had breathed new air, crumbled a new earth between their fingers and cupped their hands in cool little streams that meandered through the wild-flowers and grasses; every day they had looked up into a limitless sky and thought that they sensed the mountains at the horizon, holding it up.

Unlike the pioneers, Scott didn't have the time to experience the wide land. He was a traveller, not a sojourner—and, he thought, the poorer for it.

.

.  
The first time that Scott really saw Indians was on the plains beyond Omaha, before the train reached the mountains.

The train had halted at one of the railroad company's tiny depots, taking water for the great boiler from a tall water-tower and loading the open truck behind the locomotive with tons of little black nuggets of coal. Quite a few men on the train jumped down to stretch legs aching with inactivity, Scott among them. Nordhoff, too, clambered down from the high platform between carriages, but he was intent on scurrying off to the front of the train to watch the refuelling operations, his ever-present notebook at the ready.

The coarse buffalo grass was almost waist-high. Scott felt as though he were wading in it, as if in a gentler sea than the Atlantic he knew. Like the ocean, the grasses moved in endless susurration, making the same little sounds as wavelets on a shingled beach, bending and moving before the lonely prairie wind. Everywhere Scott looked, the grasses moved and sighed and moved again, studded with little flowers in blue, and pink and yellow. _Like exotic fish_, thought Scott, taking the analogy further and then laughing at himself for the ridiculous fancy.

He drew in a deep breath and smiled at the strangeness of the land. The air was tangy with scents he didn't quite recognise; sharp and clean, cutting down into his chest and filling it with the fresh scent of the grasses. He stretched and straightened to his full height, taking another deep breath, and looked up and west towards the mountains, wondering if he'd catch sight of them.

Something moved in the grasses. He turned his head and watched idly as the riders came closer, travelling on a barely discernible trail that ran parallel to the railroad track to the depot buildings, the only man-made structures visible in the wide land. There were five of them, on rough-coated, compact little ponies.

The sound of a rifle bullet being levered into the breech startled him. Glancing to his right, he saw one of the passengers from lower down the train, a tall, rough-looking man in western dress, stand ready with his rifle in his hands, his gaze intent on the riders.

The riders came closer, moving down the trail at a walk. Scott took in the long black hair caught in rough braids, bare chests with what almost amounted to breastplates of looped clay and turquoise beads, brightly-coloured cloth breechclouts and deer-skin leggings and moccasins.

He took another deep breath and held it, his heart hammering in his chest for a moment. There was a soft exclamation of fright and distress from the open window of the train carriage behind him, quickly hushed. He felt as if he were naked and alone and took a step backward until he had the cool metal of one of the carriage wheels at his back. He glanced up and behind him, seeing the pale ovals of faces pressed against the glass.

The Indians rode by without looking right or left, their faces expressionless. It was if the train was invisible to them, for all the interest they showed in it. They rode on towards the depot buildings as if they didn't see the train or the frightened people crowded at the windows watching them, or the man with the rifle or Scott. For all that, Scott didn't think for a moment that the dark eyes that refused to acknowledge him had missed any detail of the train and the people and him. The Indians rode as if all these things were insignificant to them, of no account to the land they travelled through. They rode on past the depot buildings and beyond, disappearing into the grasses that waved in the wind.

The man to his right turned his head and spat. Scott looked at him.

"Crow," the man said, and shrugged. "Or maybe Osage. But I reckon Crow's more likely."

"Dangerous?" asked Scott, finding a voice that was unaccustomedly hoarse.

"They all is," said the man, with another shrug. "But maybe not this time Not only five of 'em agin the train. They ain't stupid."

Scott nodded his understanding. He noted the man didn't unchamber the rifle bullet and was grateful, while a little internal voice laughed at him for his fears. _It's because I wasn't expecting it_, he told himself, firmly. _Because they were different._ He watched until the Indians were out of sight in the grasses.

In the safe, civilised East, the few Indians who had survived the ravages of the smallpox and measles brought by the Puritan settlers hadn't been any sort of threat for generations. In the East, the Indians had succumbed to civilisation, had been over-run by it as by Juggernaut's Car, their failure to withstand change inevitable against the inexorable forces ranged against them. Here, Scott thought, on the broad flat plains, the Indians must live very much as they'd always lived. But now that the railroads were joining coast to coast and opening up the vast plains and mountains in between, the safe civilisation that Scott was used to would surely follow, making a bigger imprint on the land than the Indians. The Indians, Scott felt, passed over the plain very much as the wind did; the grasses bent and waved and when the Indians had gone, the grasses sprang up, and bent and waved as if they'd never been there. The Indians conformed to the land and what it demanded of them. The white man forced the land to conform to him and his passage was more permanently etched on the surface of the world.

Scott was still watching and thinking when Nordhoff rejoined him, full of chatter about the encounter with the wild savages who lived on the plains.

"What encounter?" asked Scott, recovering himself. "What wild savages? They ignored us and went their way. They weren't interested in us, just in getting to wherever it is they're going."

"Oh well," said Nordhoff, and laughed. "There's no story in that!"

"Perhaps," said Scott, slowly. He looked up and down the track, at the straight iron path scored over a plain that had been unscarred by men for millennia before civilisation came. "We're leaving them behind," he said. "They're falling ever more behind and losing what they had. They can't win, can they?"

Nordhoff looked at him, clearly puzzled. "The Indians? Well, I guess our cavalry are better equipped, so the Indians will lose in the end."

"I didn't mean that, exactly. That's just the way they'll lose, not why. They can't win because they move across the surface of the land and respect it, but we hunger to own it." Scott gestured to the emigrant cars. "The farmers in that car hunger to own it and change it."

"That's the way it's always been," said Nordhoff. "Farmers are the greatest stabilising forces of civilisation."

"I suppose so." Scott looked west, but the Indians had vanished completely. "Didn't you feel that they really belonged here in a way that we don't?"

Nordhoff gave him a tolerant look. "We belong, Lancer. Or we will. The farmers will make that happen, you know. They will change this empty land."

"It isn't empty," said Scott.

"It may as well be," said Nordhoff. "The farmers will claim it, until it belongs to us."

"I know. Whereas the Indians belong to the land." Scott sighed slightly, troubled by the usurpation. "I was thinking, though, that we lose something, as well as gain. There's a story in that, you know, and a sad one."

Nordhoff shook his head. "I'm no Rousseau," he said, "to believe that there's more morality in natural Man than in you or I."

"What you mean is that no-one would ever read that story."

"No," said Nordhoff. "They wouldn't." He mimicked Scott's gesture at the cars. "They want the Indians to lose, of course, and they don't care how many are killed; the more the better. As you said, the farmers want the land. They don't see that there's a story there that matters. Where's the romance and excitement in it?"

Scott stared at him, wondering how anyone could miss the romance of a story that was reaching its ending and could never be re-read.

"We change or we die, Lancer," said Nordhoff, with the ready sympathy that Scott had already come to expect from him. "We know that and we've embraced the challenge. The Indians don't. They may be noble savages but they can't stand against this." He slapped his hand against the side of the railroad car. "They're of the past, you know."

Scott nodded.

"Well, then," said Nordhoff, his dark eyes bright. "We mustn't make the mistake that they do. We mustn't cling to the past at the expense of the present, Lancer, and certainly not sacrifice the future."

"No," said Scott, suddenly thoughtful. "We mustn't."

.

.  
Scott had taken care to ensure that he had some privacy on the journey. He'd booked berths in the Sleeping Car with every railroad on his long journey, taking one of the small, but very good, little state rooms at the end of the carriage. He'd paid a considerable amount for the privilege of getting a State Room to himself—he didn't ask Murdoch Lancer's Pinkerton agent to reimburse that particular cost—but it was worth every cent. He had easy chairs and an upholstered couch in his compartment, and every evening the grey-clad chamberman arrived to convert the couch into a comfortable bed, taking the bed linen from cleverly-contrived storage lockers in the roof. Even when his bed was made, there was still room enough for he and Nordhoff to enjoy their post-dinner brandies and watch night deepen across the wide American plains or wonder at how the mountains made mysterious shapes against starry skies. It was absolutely worth every cent not to have to go through the fuss and bother of converting his daytime travelling seat into a bed each evening and then having to sleep on a bunk with a couple of dozen strangers in the same car with barely the privacy of a curtain between them.

"It's a little like sleeping in a small closet," said Nordhoff. "I have half my belongings on my feet and the other half are tied to the rail that holds the curtain. That curtain, Lancer, is the sole protection between my modesty and the other twenty three occupants of the car, each of whom are sleeping in their own curtain-y closets." Nordhoff rubbed at his nose, reflectively, pushing his spectacles back up into their proper place. "The lady next to me on the Chicago train snored. I was at a loss to know how to deal with it. If it had been Missus Nordhoff, then a sharp, but gentle, elbow to the ribs usually does the trick, but I felt that to try that remedy with a stranger might be embarrassingly misconstrued…"

"I don't envy you that," said Scott, laughing. "I've shared close quarters in the past, and I've no desire to repeat it."

With an air of not speaking to anyone in particular, Nordhoff remarked that the accommodations were perfectly adequate if one weren't an out and out sybarite of a Boston Brahmin.

Scott felt a little guilty about not inviting the journalist to share the room, which was certainly big enough, but while it may have been selfish to take up an entire little compartment, Scott had shared cramped quarters before. Occasionally, he woke sweating and screaming from the dreams about it, although far less often now, it had to be said, than when he'd first been released from Libby into the makeshift hospital at Macon in Georgia whence Harlan had come to fetch him home after the Confederacy surrendered. He had no desire ever to be in such forced intimacy again. The Pullman car may have lacked the fleas, vermin and near starvation of the old tobacco warehouse that was Libby and, later, of Macon prison camp, but he didn't care for any reminder, however vague or fleeting.

So all he did was smile and incline his head. "Guilty as charged, Mister Nordhoff. Have another brandy."

.

.  
The train was more luxurious than even Mr Crofutt's and Mr Hart's admiring guidebooks had led Scott to expect. As well as enjoying the privacy of his own compartment, he could join the other first-class passengers in the parlour and dining cars, spending long enjoyable days in conversation, reading, and looking at the scenery.

It was a lazy, restful and luxurious life, and his grandfather's fears about poor accommodations or that he wouldn't have a decent dinner until his return seemed unfounded. Indeed, regarding the latter, the dining car menu was both moderately priced and adequate, and the Krug was bone dry, the way he preferred his champagne.

As Scott had anticipated, while there were other men to talk to and whose company he enjoyed, Nordhoff turned out to be the most interesting of the travellers who, in the journalist's own words, "took up residence on the train".

"Another aphorism?" asked Scott, watching with amusement as Nordhoff enclosed a copy of the menu within his notebook and wrote down his latest bon mot.

Nordhoff flourished his pen and smiled, before returning to the attack on his (admittedly, slightly tough) steak and fried potatoes. "Life, my dear Lancer, is all aphorisms," he said, rather indistinctly.

Scott took a moment to answer. "Yes," he said, and he had to try hard to keep the weariness from his tone. "I know."

"You're too young to be a cynic," said Nordhoff and Scott smiled and changed the subject.

"Will you write a book about this?" he asked, surprising himself by asking a question so directly. "I've noticed how you watch everyone and observe them, and I've always assumed that's how writers do it, they watch and learn."

Nordhoff pushed his spectacles back up onto the bridge of his nose—they had a habit of slipping until Nordhoff had to peer over them, Scott had noticed—and nodded. "Quite right. Look at how that couple in the corner seats can barely tolerate looking at each other; she turns her head away whenever he speaks and he scowls all the time. And did you notice the elderly lady behind us, the one in Quaker grey? She's travelling alone and intent on reading her book—her Bible, do you think?—and her spectacles keep sliding down her nose and have to be pushed back." Nordhoff laughed. "Mine do the same. It's most irritating. And that young man over there—he has the same sort of beautiful manners as your own, Lancer, that keep him captive of the old man with sad, dark eyes who's wearing a suit from thirty years ago. And can you see that the old man's lapels are dusted with snuff? So many stories there!"

Scott smiled. "I thought that you missed very little," he said, glancing at each little tableau that Nordhoff mentioned.

"In a way, the people I see are raw material. In here—" –and Nordhoff tapped his temple—"in here, I can give them names and histories, and I can paint their stories in the brightest colours." He laughed. "Everything gets exaggerated on the page, Lancer."

Scott nodded slowly. "Yes, I see."

"All writers are a little shameless about taking something from what we observe," Nordhoff waved a hand towards their travelling companions in the car. "Oh, nothing they know about or would miss; but … let's see. I might take the way that that rather portly businessman over there taps his cigar, and the mane of white hair on that gentleman in the corner and your own clipped, educated Bostonian accent. Then the trick is to bring them all together, to fashion them into a character on the page who breathes and lives, that readers can identify with. One day I'll make my literary fortune."

Scott smiled. "Well, if you use my accent to help you, I'll expect an appropriate acknowledgment."

"But of course." Nordhoff raised his wineglass. "In dedication to Scott Lancer, Gentleman of Boston, whose euphonious accent and elegant, educated discourse is so imperfectly captured in these pages as to give only a hint of his intellect and powers, and to whom the author owes his most humble and grateful thanks."

Scott could only bow.

.

.  
The journalist was the antithesis of world-weary, a word he didn't allow in his lexicon. He was enthusiastic and knowledgeable and quickly commandeered Scott's guide book since it was superior to Hart's Travellers Own Guide, which was all Nordhoff had had time to buy before leaving New York. Nordhoff liked to give the book its full and sonorous title—_ Trans-Continental Tourist's Guide... describing 500 Cities, Towns, Villages, Forts and Camps, Mountains, Lakes, Rivers ... etc. ... Where to Look for and Hunt Buffalo, Antelope, Deer, and other Game; Trout Fishing, etc., etc. ... Where to Go, How to Go_, ..._While passing over the Union Pacific Railroad, Central Pacific Railroad of Cal., their Branches and Connections by Stage and Water, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. [Illustrated.] New York, Geo. A. Crofutt—_and mastered it quickly. He spent long hours pointing out everything from towns and rivers and mountains, gorges, to cañons and marvellous rock outcrops to bison and antelope and prairie dog towns, with many a "Quick Lancer! You must see this!"

"It's a tree," said Scott.

"It's the thousand mile tree!" And, indeed, a painted sign saying as much swung from one of the lower branches. "We've come exactly one thousand miles from Omaha!"

"It's still a tree," said Scott.

"It's an important tree!"

"Indeed?" said Scott, politely. "I'm very grateful to you for pointing it out."

Nordhoff smiled. "You, young man, are altogether too constrained by your good manners.".

"I know," said Scott. At the stop at Cheyenne, where the train metaphorically caught its breath before the long, slow climb up into the glory of the Rocky Mountains, he'd found half-a dozen volumes for sale in the railroad company's store and had bought them to help while away the journey. He indicated the one he had been reading when Nordhoff had suddenly noticed the tree. "Perhaps the ruder conditions of the West will beat it out of me. My grandfather and Mister John Wesley Hardin, who is finding terrible trouble while thundering along something called The Pecos, both tell me that it's inhabited mostly by outlaws and desperadoes."

"You'll fit right in," promised Nordhoff. "What on earth are you reading?"

Scott laughed and showed the novels to Nordhoff. "I don't think that these quite match the deathless prose of Mister Dickens. The titles alone are astonishing. What do you make of _Two Guns for Pinos Altos_, or _Thunder along the Pecos_, or _Trouble along the Cimmaron_? Fantastical, aren't they? I wonder if such men as these really exist?"

"We've written about the gunmen in our paper," said Nordhoff, reminding Scott that he also worked for the New York Evening Post. He chuckled and looked a little shame-faced. "They're a romantic notion to someone who's never been outside Harlem, say."

Scott nodded, remembering the odd article in The Liberator that he had tended to laugh about and skim, without taking in much detail.

One of the other passengers, an elderly Texan who had travelled the length and breadth of the continent and who was the owner of the mane of white hair that Nordhoff had considered appropriating for Literature, was sitting near them that day and took an interest in the books that Scott had scattered over the seat. After apologising courteously for interrupting, he turned over the lurid-looking dime novels with a brisk interest.

"All of these are about real men, sir," he said. "John Hardin is a Texas boy, though I'm ashamed to own to it, and Dallas Stoudenmire was a Texas Ranger until a year or two ago. I've seen Stoudenmire. He was pointed out to me in the street down in El Paso a couple of years ago and a smaller, more insignificant man I'd defy you to find west of the Mississippi. I don't know much about Johnny Madrid except that he's half-Mexican, so he could be from anywhere along the border. Clay Allison's from Tennessee, I believe."

"I'd thought them mainly a construct of a journalist's imagination—with apologies, Nordhoff."

"Oh, no offence," said Nordhoff, airily.

"But if they're real…" Scott turned back to the elderly gentleman. "You don't suggest these tales are true, surely, sir."

"No, sir; I'd aim to doubt that. But there'll be a kernel of truth in them. These men all live by the gun. They're hired guns, and fast guns. We're a mite too far north for them to be so well known or active here, maybe, but down south, along the border… well, that's a deadly, dangerous place, and men like these make it that way. They're very well known down there."

"And by 'hired guns' you mean what, sir? A sort of mercenary?"

"Nothing so noble," said the old Texan. "Every man in the west goes armed, but only a very few—men like these—are artists with a gun. If you're a rich landowner and there's a range war brewing over grazing or water rights, maybe, then you hire someone like Hardin or Madrid to frighten or kill the opposition. They're hired killers."

"What the papers in the East write about are the duels, where the one to draw his gun the fastest, wins by killing or injuring his opponent," said Nordhoff, picking up one of the novels and leafing through it.

"It's how they earn their reputation." The old gentleman shook his head. "Gun-fighting's legal, but it's not civilised."

"I don't think that duels of any kind are civilised, sir," said Nordhoff.

The Texan nodded polite agreement and returned to his own book. It didn't appear to be a dime novel, Scott noticed.

"Well, Nordhoff, there's copy for you!" said Scott, cheerfully. He wondered if he should have packed his old Army revolver, after all. He hadn't really believed that the West was full of the sort of violence that he'd seen during the war, where at least the bloodshed and the brutality had had huge political significance, but perhaps his grandfather was right about how uncivilised the West was in comparison with the sophistication of Boston and the East Coast. The violence in the dime novels was so casual as to be incomprehensible.

Nordhoff shook his head and looked up from _Johnny Madrid, the Border Hawk: Trouble Along the Cimmaron_. "Not for this job, thank you, Lancer. The brief is to promote the joys and benefits of travelling west, by stressing how very civilised it is, not to frighten the passengers with tales of wicked, desperate men with sapphire eyes who quell saloons full of roughnecks with a single glance! Perhaps when I've finished these articles." He laughed and dropped the novel onto the seat beside Scott. "We'll never meet anything like them in San Francisco, more's the pity!"

"I hope not!" And Scott re-opened the fantastical, lurid covers of _Thunder Along The Pecos_ and lost himself for an hour or two in the fantastical, lurid life of Mr John Wesley Hardin, professional gunman and desperado, as recounted therein.

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And so he read and talked and looked out of the window at the endless landscapes of America; at plains, deserts and mountains, and if he still dreamed of tall shapes and remorseful fathers, the feeling he'd had since Libby of being disconnected and detached slowly faded. Sometimes Scott found himself, in the oddest way, stretching like a man waking from sleep. Maybe it was something in the clear, unsullied air of the plains and the Rocky Mountains, more stimulating than the jaded air of Boston; maybe it was the novelty of his journey and his companions. But whatever it was, it was enough to force some of the lassitude from his bones.

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At Ogden, they transferred to the Central Pacific Railroad train. Scott watched, fascinated, as the Union Pacific locomotive engine was shunted into a sideline with a queer turntable at one end, that allowed it to turn and chug back along a short parallel piece of track past the now-stationary train. It ran past the last train car and rejoined the main track, before reversing back to couple back up to a train that was now ready to travel East again.

The CPR locomotive was already coupled to their train, having made use of the turntable before the Union Pacific train pulled into Ogden. Scott wondered, idly, if there were ever disputes about precedence and how they were resolved. In the world of the dime novel, the combination of gun fight, nerves of steel and a draw faster than lightning appeared to be the accepted mode of settling a dispute, but he didn't think that Samuel Colt's pistols would quite fit the bill for the railroad men. Stokers' shovels at dawn instead, perhaps.

Nordhoff laughed at this suggestion and added it to his ever present notebook: a Lancer-special aphorism.

They walked down the long platform to where the Central Pacific train waited for them, Scott tipping his hat politely to the ladies and adroitly avoiding the children. There were some big, rougher-looking men near the emigrant cars, their few belongings at their feet as they waited. While none wore gun belts, most had a rifle leaning against their packs, mostly ex-Army Henrys, if Scott were any judge. He looked for the man he'd seen when the Indians passed the train, but didn't recognise him amongst the crowd.

"Miners, I should think," said Nordhoff after they had passed.

"I hadn't realised that the goldfields were still being worked."

"People still go to California to make their fortune," said Nordhoff.

Scott wondered if it had been the thought of gold that had drawn Murdoch Lancer to California all those years before, taking him and his bride to a land that still belonged then to Mexico. Why had the man gone so very far West when, if it was land hunger that drew him, there were countless millions of acres to choose from? He wondered what answer Lancer would give him when he asked. If he asked. If his father answered.

(A tallness, a vague tallness that said, _So you're Scott, are you?_ and hands seizing him in joy and a voice saying _My son!_)

Scott said, abruptly, "I was born in California."

Surprised, Nordhoff stared. "Not Boston?"

"No. Not Boston." Scott smiled slightly. "It was before Statehood. I'm told California was a very lawless place then. My mother didn't survive, and I was taken straight back to Boston by my grandfather. I have no memory of it, of course."

"That's rather a romantic notion," said the journalist, and Scott could almost see the story-teller's instincts rising. "So this is a homecoming, of sorts."

Scott paused and frowned, thinking about that. "No," he said, at last. "No. I don't think I'd call it that. It was never given the chance to be home."

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Nordhoff was determined that Scott shouldn't miss what the guidebook said was the crowning glory of the Sierras Nevada.

"The mountains of snow," said Scott, looking pointedly out of the window. The train was laboriously working up through the foothills towards the higher peaks, all of which gleamed cold and pale in the moonlight. "Snow, Charles. Cold, white snow."

"And you a New Englander!" scoffed Nordhoff, taking no notice at all, and despite his protests, Scott allowed himself to be bundled into the open-sided observation car when the train stopped briefly at Truckee at four o'clock on a bitterly cold morning. He sat in the open car huddled into two jackets and wrapped in a comforter, with hot bricks at his feet and a lidded tin pail full of piping-hot coffee within reach in a straw-box, and threatened Nordhoff with painful retribution if it wasn't worth it.

On the other side of forty miles or so of long snowsheds where all they saw was an occasional brief glimpse of the darkling world in the gaps between the huge timbers that made up the sheds, and the Summit tunnel bored through the mountain itself, Scott poured a measure of brandy into his coffee.

"Well, that was impressive."

"Oh ye of little faith," said Nordhoff, smiling, and a little while later was justified in his perennial optimism when the train rounded Cape Horn on bright spring morning, just after dawn.

"Good God," said Scott, involuntarily, staring down several thousand feet of sheer precipice into a narrow cañon with a thread of bright ribbon at the bottom that had to be the American River. He grinned as the train started its long swoop down to Sacramento and the coast beyond, the final leg of their long journey.

"Yes," said Nordhoff with a nod. He swept out an arm in a wide arc to encompass the mountains and valleys, and the wide blue sky beyond. "If He made all of this, then perhaps He is good indeed."

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**Day Eight, Wednesday 30 March – Day Thirteen, Monday 4 April**

Scott liked San Francisco.

He had enjoyed the long run through the Sacramento valley, admiring the vineyards and farms that covered the low hills; and was secretly thrilled by the final few thousand yards when the train ran along a great pier into the midst of ocean-going ships and fishing-smacks in the middle of San Francisco bay... well, it may not have been as dramatic as the Rockies or the Sierras Nevada, but it was a satisfying end to the long journey. Not even the ferry ride across the bay from Oakland on a cool, damp evening dampened his spirits; he revelled instead in the contrast from Summit Tunnel that morning to the low coastlands. And although they arrived too late for him to see much of San Francisco that night, the ferry ride had taken them west to a setting sun and the bright lights of a city, and that in itself felt welcoming.

Despite his grandfather's forebodings about one-horse western towns, the city was as sophisticated as Boston. It had its great public buildings, its theatres and galleries; and if they were all relatively new, in comparison with old Boston, they were very grand. Scott was very impressed with the Palace Hotel where he and Nordhoff had booked rooms. The hotel was as richly furnished as any that Boston or New York might boast; its chandeliers as bright and imposing, its furnishings as comfortable and luxurious, the service offered as attentive and efficient. The men were as well-dressed and the women as elegant, fashionable and sophisticated as any who lived on Beacon Hill. This was a rich city.

And one that forced Scott to rethink everything he had ever thought or been told about the West. This was no western hick town inhabited by desperate gunmen. This was no poverty-stricken land where men scratched out livings from the dirt, not the parts he'd seen, anyway. He remembered the lush green vineyards in the Sacramento valley and the rolling grassy hills around Stockton.

Of course, Lancer was more than a hundred miles to the south, and the land could change. But still. It might be that the thousand dollars hadn't been scrimped and saved from a lifetime of toil. It might be that Murdoch Lancer wasn't living a hand-to-mouth existence after all. It might be that Murdoch Lancer could have sent for his son at any time over the last twenty-five years. It might be that it hadn't been poverty and work that had kept Murdoch Lancer from coming to Boston to claim him. All of which begged a question or two.

Yes, indeed. A question or two.

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There were differences, of course, San Francisco wasn't just a species of Boston, picked up and deposited onto a warmer coast. The architecture was different, the pace of life was different, the food was different, the accents were different.

And for all that it was a big city, there were sightings of that wilder, less sophisticated West that Scott had expected to see and which the dime novels had celebrated. He saw several people in the streets in country garb—"If by country garb, you mean a six-gun, Scott," murmured Nordhoff, openly staring at a young man slouching along one of the main thoroughfares in a checked shirt and a large hat, and with a gun belted around his hips—but there were relatively few signs that this was, as Harlan had feared, a mushroom of a city without culture or refinement. It had both in bucketloads.

"Although," observed Nordhoff, when they found themselves at the Chinese Theatre one evening, watching acrobats tumbling and listening to discordant Oriental music, "this is not a culture that I'm used to."

Scott only nodded, his eyes fixed on a Chinese beauty, dressed in rich embroidered brocades and with the most astonishing gold headdress spiked into her luxuriant black hair. He was too distracted for conversation. Nordhoff followed his gaze to the area opposite their box where all the Chinese women sat, and chuckled softly.

"Oh, _that's_ the sort of culture that interests you," he said.

Scott grinned, not something he'd have done if his grandfather had been present. "She's a beauty," he said.

"She is, but as an old married man, I know better than to let myself be dazzled. Missus Nordhoff has a good eye and an accurate aim with the frying pan."

Scott laughed. The pretty Chinese girl leaned back until she was screened by an obvious duenna, and he turned his attention back to his companion. "You make married life sound so very enticing."

"Complaisance and Missus Nordhoff make me a boring married man, of course, And if you weren't a boring Bostonian businessman, we could go to the Cliff House again for breakfast tomorrow."

"I'm sorry, Charles, but I don't think that would allow me to get back in time to meet Mister Paynter at our appointment at ten. I hope to finalise the business with him before the weekend. By the way, he's invited me to join him and his family at Santa Rosa—" Scott hesitated.

"Don't hesitate on my account, Scott. You go ahead and do the pretty with the Paytons and secure your business deal. I have to start some serious sightseeing if I'm to 'finish' San Francisco in time for me to go with you to Stockton on Tuesday to take my trip up to Yo Semite to see the Big Trees. This is work for me, don't forget."

"It's a hard life," sympathised Scott. "I don't know how you bear it."

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Scott had a quiet family weekend with George Paynter, whose company specialised in manufacturing the highest quality household goods and supplied many of the items of interior decor for the rich of San Francisco ("Everything from stoves to curtain rods, Mister Lancer, and our business is growing all the time. Come and look around our Works and see for yourself.") and who was looking for investors to fund a contract with the Pullman car company and the railroads just at the time that Harlan Garrett was looking to invest. Meetings with Paynter and representatives of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which was building the Sacramento-Bakersfield-Los Angeles route and linking it to a network of local connexions, had been very productive.

Scott enjoyed his few days at the Paynters' county house just north of the city, spending his time riding and fishing. There was a Miss Abigail Paynter (aged twenty) to be harmlessly flirted with and a Mrs Paynter to be deferred to and charmed by Scott's best Boston manners. Both ladies succumbed with flattering alacrity, and Miss Abigail, in particular, had the most beguiling, blushing innocence about her. Scott was a thorough gentleman and forbore to disturb it, saving his energies for the less innocent ladies in San Francisco whose acquaintance he'd already made.

Altogether, he thought that his grandfather would be pleased by the deal that he struck, and he returned to San Francisco in time for a final day's sightseeing, only slightly disadvantaged by the need to write his grandfather a long letter and report, and send him copies of the contracts by the Wells Fargo mail. He took Mr Paynter to dinner on the strength of a successful conclusion to their business, and introduced him to Nordhoff. The sober businessman let his hair down and the three of them had a riotous time.

Scott got only a little tipsy. He had an early train to catch and his long journey was almost over. He had the feeling he'd need a clear head for what lay ahead of him.

.

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.

tbc


	3. Chapter 3

**Hackamore 2 : Fancy Dan Part 3**

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**.  
**

**Day Fourteen, Tuesday 5 April – Day Fifteen, Wednesday 6 April**

_San Francisco – StocktonWestern Pacific Railroad_

_Stockton-Lathrop-Manteca-Modesto-Turlock-Merced-Madera__Wells Fargo Stage _

Stockton was the first real Western town that Scott had seen. Although only a few hours from San Francisco by train, it was an entire world away from that sophisticated city. Here, with a few exceptions, the buildings in the main street were low, only two stories, and many were no more than fancy fronts that bore no relation to the basic sheds erected behind them. That things were changing was obvious—there was an orgy of building work going on, constructing more permanent and sophisticated buildings down Main street—but the streets were dusty and unpaved, the people… well, the people were positively rustic. He and Nordhoff were the oddities in the street, the ones not wearing calico shirts, big hats and high-heeled boots. Scott hadn't seen so many armed men since the War; he, Nordhoff and one or two other Easterners were the only men not to be walking about with a few pounds of metal tied to their hips.

By the time they had reached Stockton at noon, Scott was over the mild indisposition he'd felt following their carousal the evening before. Nordhoff didn't get off so lightly. For the first time in Scott's experience, Nordhoff had been distinctly surly when he'd stumbled into the cab outside the hotel that took them back to the ferry for Oakland to take the Transcontinental route back East. He'd slept for most of the four hours it took the train to retrace their steps to Stockton, for once not leaping up to exhort Scott to look out of the window or to listen to some pearl of Mr Crofutt's wisdom. Nordhoff was still inclined to squint against the light and complain about his 'unexpected bilious attack' when they made their way to Stockton's Yo Semite House, where he would stay for the next part of his assignment.

Scott hadn't minded Nordhoff's silence. Now that he was on the very last leg of his long journey, he found that he was disinclined for talk, focused again on the real reason coming to California. The long, interesting journey and the small business task for his grandfather, even Nordhoff's chatter, were all insufficient to divert him any longer. The meeting he'd speculated about all his life was almost upon him, and, almost as if he were once again that small, well-behaved lonely boy in his grandfather's house looking to see his father in every stranger, his mind played and replayed a dozen different scenes, all variants on the theme where his father finally welcomed him with open arms, acknowledged him, embraced him, begged his forgiveness for his neglect.

The problem was that he had no more idea now what Murdoch Lancer looked like than he'd had at five or six, despite the last few weeks of thinking about it and dreaming about it. Even when he sat down, wide awake, to rationalise it all, he couldn't come up with satisfactory details.

His dream of a tall man and a voice, well that was probably a memory from childhood made up of any number of strangers, business contacts of his grandfather's and should be discounted. Being logical about it, he could admit the tallness. He himself was tall, so it was reasonable to assume that his father was too, but the figure in his imagination still remained unformed, the details elusive. He could force his imagination to provide a tall shape, but the face was a formless oval. He knew that he took after his mother in looks and colouring, so there wasn't much point in trying to force some of his own features onto the oval and say, _yes, that is my father_. And Scott couldn't begin to imagine what his father sounded like. Deep voice, light voice, a western drawl, still with a Scottish accent after all these years? How was he to know? He had nothing, absolutely nothing, to go on.

So those variants of the scene where his father finally welcomed him, embraced him, acknowledged him and begged his forgiveness for the neglect... well, they were hard to define and even harder to hold on to. Scott knew that at his journey's end he would walk into his father's house... and there it all stopped. He couldn't fix in his mind what that house would look like, his imagination wavering between the studied elegance of the mansion on Beacon Hill and the rough mud hut that Robinson Crusoe had decorated with goatskins and roofed with palm fronds, and even if the Lancer house was something in between, Scott just couldn't see it, couldn't get it anything like right in his head. Just like in the dream, his father would come to meet him, hurrying with remorse and eagerness, and a voice would say _My son! My son!_ and two strong hands would grasp him by the shoulders and... and... . Scott couldn't get it. Everything blurred and the images slipped away.

That was the worst of dreams. They slithered away like snakes.

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Scott took a cordial farewell of Nordhoff on the evening of April 5th, the two sharing a last dinner together at the Yo Semite House Hotel before exchanging addresses and promising to meet again when they were both home in the East. He caught the early stage the next morning, before Nordhoff was awake. He was sorry to lose the journalist's company, not least because now he had no diversion from his thoughts as the coach rattled and swayed its seriously uncomfortable way south.

Despite the physical closeness of his father, the mental image still refused to co-operate, refusing to yield up one atom of information to allow Scott to imagine their meeting. In the end, he gave it up. He talked a little with his fellow passengers, every one of them country people, and opened up the book that he'd bought in a San Francisco store. He knew himself too well to think that it was only nostalgic impulse that had prompted him to revisit his boyhood, but still he lost himself for a while in the archaic density of seventeenth-century prose.

_I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at __Hull__: He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at __York__, from whence he had married my Mother, Relations were named __Robinson__, a very good Family at Country, and from whom I was called __Robinson Keutznaer__; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our Selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me_.

He was jerked out of the narrative every time the coach hit a rut or a stone, clutching at his hat or his book or whatever threatened to be dislodged on each bone-jarring convulsion.

His grandfather was quite right. Coaches were an instrument of the Devil.

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**Day Sixteen Thursday 7 April**

_Madera – FresnoWells Fargo Stage _

_Fresno – Morro CoyoFresno County Stagelines  
_

The Madera way-station was the first place where Scott had stayed that didn't offer the sort of accommodation that he was used to. The train had been cramped, but the quality of the fittings in the Pullman cars had been beyond criticism, every bit as snug as his bedroom back in Boston. The hotel in San Francisco had been the equal of anything back in the East, and even the Yo Semite House had been one of the most sophisticated buildings in Stockton and almost hedonistically luxurious.

But the way station!

Scott finally realised that he'd had the most privileged journey so far and he began to see why travel in the West was seen as such an adventure. In Madera there was no private, luxuriously-appointed room with his own bathing room and lavatory attached. Madera boasted nothing more than a rough adobe building with an odorous outhouse that had Scott gagging from the stench. He wasn't expecting it and it took him unawares. He stood for just an instant inside the outhouse door, his hands clenching and unclenching, before he veered away from the outhouse into some of the scrubby bushes behind it. He heaved and heaved to get the remembered smells and taste of Libby out from where they were buried, just under the skin.

Libby didn't often come back because of words, because of someone speaking of the war or their experience or asking Scott what he'd done or where he'd served. Scott had learned to guard against words, to shield himself against the memories that mere words might provoke. Instead, Libby came back in ways that he couldn't expect or guard against: the angular shapes of shadows cast by the summer sun, an unexpected touch, or smell, or sounds. Once he'd spent a week shaking after hearing the voice of a stranger in the street, the words indistinguishable but the tone and intonation all too potent. For months after his return home, Mrs Reynolds had had to show him the ingredients of her kitchen to let him see for himself, over and over, that there was no vermin in them. Even after all these years, he couldn't bear the smell or taste of oatmeal. In these things, Libby had never left him and perhaps never would.

Still, it took less and less time now to safely lock away everything that was in the past. A few minutes retching in the bushes, another few minutes sitting back on his heels and telling himself that he was an idiot, another few minutes for the ridiculous tremor to stop and Scott Garrett Lancer, gentleman of Boston, was his usual urbane self again and he could get up, brush the dust from his clothes with hands that were steady once again and go into the main building to rejoin his fellow passengers as if nothing had happened.

The other passengers were already at supper, heads down over their plates at a common table. Scott blinked at the sheer amount of the food there. It wasn't presented in an elegant manner, but there was certainly enough of it. The wooden table top had a low sheen to it, not highly French-polished like the one in his grandfather's dining room, but it was clean and big enough for a dozen or more platters under wire-and-net screens to keep off flies. The platters held beef or vegetables, plainly cooked—Scott couldn't see a sauce or jus anywhere—but to go with them were dishes of sweet-sour pickles, or finely chopped onion, or strange little green vegetables as long as his little finger, or what looked like chopped tomatoes.

The woman who seemed to manage the way station warned him off the little green vegetables—"They're jalapeno peppers, Mister. If you ain't used to 'em, they'll burn your lips right off. The salsa's spicy too, but it won't kill yer."—and Scott nodded his thanks, and picked his way through the food. To his surprise, it was better than it looked. He made a reasonable meal despite his earlier brush with unpleasant memory, listening quietly to the conversation around him. It seemed that cattle prices were up; planned discussions by the legislature in Sacramento about damming the San Joaquin River had died unspoken face by the vigorous opposition of something called the Cattle Growers Association; the Southern Pacific Railroad was only fifteen miles short of joining the Western Pacific at Sacramento and completing the Los Angeles-Bakersfield-Sacramento route; some men were spoken of in hushed terms as having returned to Fresno County from around Modesto in the north, where the sheriff had apparently been killed, and were now causing trouble near somewhere called Spanish Wells and (and here Scott looked up, interested) Morro Coyo; there was an outbreak of black fly fever over in Cantua Creek, wherever that may be; and it seemed some smaller railroad companies were making headway in joining up their spur railroads to the new Southern Pacific line around Modesto, having overcome local opposition.

Except for the railroad news, which chimed with what Scott had learned in San Francisco during his business discussions, Scott thought that they might as well have been discussing the affairs of Uttar Pradesh for all the sense they made. And did one really grow cattle? Still, he wasn't called upon to say very much himself, and although everyone gave him frankly curious glances, no-one asked outright what his business was in this place where he stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. Perhaps it would be some breach of that strange Code of the West that the dime novels made so much of. Well, he was grateful for it; he finished his meal in peace and went to look at the rest of the accommodations.

The way-station offered a common dormitory fitted out with old campaign beds that had probably seen service in tents at Shiloh, covered with equally old Army blankets of very doubtful cleanliness. Scott was deeply suspicious of those blankets. He suspected that they'd almost have enough life in them to move around by themselves, and he'd had enough of lice and bedbugs in Libby. If he was fastidious now, he had good reason. He spent the night in a chair in the other room of the station, half-kitchen-half-saloon, dozing uncomfortably in front of a low fire, fearing to dream. He woke itching at dawn from a short, restless doze. He hoped the itching was more imagination than fleas but he had a miserable two or three hours to Fresno while he fretted about it.

Fresno was another adobe-built dormitory and stables. There were barely buildings enough around to qualify Fresno as a hamlet, and Scott was hard put to it to understand why it had been chosen as an intersection point for the Wells Fargo line and local stage coaches. Another of the smaller spur railroads would come through it to join the Sacramento line soon, the Fargo driver said, with a wave towards the south-west where the railroad construction crews laboured, and he spat angrily into the dust not far from Scott's feet. Scott could see the pall of dust in the distance, hanging like a grey cloud, but wisely said nothing about the superior comfort of the railroad as he climbed out of the big Concord coach used by the Wells Fargo company and, not without a sinking of the heart, got himself and (after some grumbling from the Fresno drivers about the amount) his luggage into the smaller coach used by Fresno County Stagelines.

Scott thought that the sooner the railroad appeared, the better for everyone. He would have paid a very great deal for a Pullman Car at that moment, a very great deal, and was almost sorry that Murdoch Lancer hadn't waited a month or two to contact him. He couldn't find it in himself at all to sympathise with the Well Fargo driver; the man smelled of horses and had an obvious aversion to soap and if it were his habit to spit at his passengers boots, it wasn't an endearing one. Scott did tip him to carry his luggage over to the Fresno County coach, but that was about as far as he could bring himself to empathise.

If the Concord coach was his grandfather's Purgatory, then this little locally built and owned coach was Hell itself. The seats were hard and uncomfortable and the space limited, with room inside for only six passengers. Scott thought they were lucky that the coach wasn't full. He sat on the forward-facing seat beside a black clad priest who barely looked up from his missal and who, when he did deign to notice the other passengers, seemed only to speak Spanish. On the opposite seats were an elderly couple and a woman who Scott assumed was their middle-aged and probably unmarried daughter. The old man had the austere face of an Old Testament prophet and the beard to go with it; the two women were thin-faced, nostrils pinched and white, and mouths in a thin, sour line as if in living proof that prophecy didn't pay much. None of them responded to Scott's greeting past a stare and a nod and if the prophet's nod was cursory, his thin-mouthed wife barely moved her head at all.

With a sigh, Scott settled down with Crusoe for the last few uncomfortable miles. He felt nauseated, something he tried to tell himself was undoubtedly to do with the fried potatoes served with supper at the Madera way-station the previous night with the left-overs warmed up for breakfast, or the bone-jarring jolt the coach gave him over every stone or patch of rough trail. It had nothing whatsoever to do with nerves jangled almost beyond endurance with the thought that he'd finally meet his father that day. Every time that thought rose, unbidden, his gorge rose a little with it and he had to swallow hard, feeling his heart thud uncomfortably.

The book in his hands shook a little. He forced himself to concentrate on Crusoe, who was coming home at last after a long journey and a lifetime in exile.

_Having done all this I left them the next day, and went on board the ship. We prepared immediately to sail, but did not weigh that night. The next morning early, two of the five men came swimming to the ship's side, and making the most lamentable complaint of the other three, begged to be taken into the ship for God's sake, for they should be murdered, and begged the captain to take them on board, though he hanged them immediately. Upon this, the captain—_

The coach lurched to such a sudden stop that Scott's hat fell into his eyes and he was almost thrown onto the knees of the prophet's wife.

"My deepest apologies, Ma'am!" he said, sitting up hastily and putting out a hand to steady the priest, who likewise had almost ended up on the knees of the prophet himself. His grandfather's training and the good manners that had been drummed into him ensured that Scott didn't allow himself to laugh out loud over how ridiculous that religious faux-pas seemed, much as it amused him. Instead, he swiftly unlatched the window and slid the glass panel down, and stuck his head out to see what was going on. At the same time, he relieved his feelings with a grin and a grimace at the dusty trees lining the roadside, none of which could assume Harlan's voice and chastise him for being rag-mannered.

A man had stopped the coach. He had a big saddle tucked under one arm and appeared to be negotiating with the drivers for a lift into Morro Coyo: successfully so, for he handed up the saddle and a pair of saddlebags to be put in the luggage space on the roof.

"We'll take care o' that gun of yours," said the driver.

From the side, Scott could see very little of the man's face, half-hidden as it was by the wide-brimmed hat that seemed to be the fashion out west. He could see that the man's jaw tightened and that he hesitated to give up his gun.

Scott was getting used to the western style of dress; the heavy-duty workpants and calico shirts were obviously more in keeping with working the land or working cattle than his own town clothes. The styles worn by the wealthier townsfolk in Stockton, much like those of the prophet and his family, might be more formal than a cowboy's clothing, but to Scott's eyes were still dowdy and old-fashioned, as narrow and as pinched as the prophet's wife's nostrils. There was a no-nonsense sparseness about it all that in no manner could be described as fashionable; they all dressed badly and would be laughed at back in Boston as unlettered yokels, countrified nobodies.

This cowboy was different. Sparseness was not a word that this young man would recognise. Scott took in a rose-pink shirt, heavy with embroidery, and pants that were decorated with silver buttons down the outside length of each leg, and he found himself grinning. He hadn't seen anything like this in Stockton, and he wondered if he'd ever seen such a peacock anywhere—a rustic, western peacock, to be sure, but Good Lord, that shirt!

He pulled his head back in. "Seems like we're picking up another passenger," he said, addressing the prophet's wife and touching his hat respectfully as he spoke to her. She sniffed in response, unimpressed. Scott, amused all over again, stuck his head back out of the open window to watch the rest of the little scene, just as the man came to a decision.

"Sure," the rose-pink peacock said. He drew his pistol, reversing it to hand it up to the guard, butt-first. "Take care, Mister, it has a hair-trigger."

The driver didn't respond verbally, although the smile on the young man's face suggested that the driver's expression said everything needful. The new passenger shrugged his way into a very short-waisted jacket trimmed with a dull gold braid, and wrenched open the stage door. He paused on the step to nod a genial greeting to them all, and fell ungracefully into the narrow strip of seat between Scott and the priest as the coach started off with the same nauseating lurch as when it stopped.

He fell onto Scott mostly, and Scott became acutely aware that it was a warm spring day and the cowboy had quite evidently been carrying that saddle for some considerable distance. The man smelled of horse and sweat.

The new passenger wriggled his… his _derrière_ into the small space between Scott and the priest, not seeming to care about the fact that he was pressing against both of them with a portion of his anatomy that a gentleman didn't normally obtrude onto people's notice. Come to think of it, those fancy decorated pants were pretty tight... Scott sighed and squashed himself into a smaller portion of the seat, and he heard the priest sigh almost in unison with him.

The rose-pink peacock gave him a smile, but the brilliant blue eyes, such a surprise in that darkly tanned face, were cool and appraising. "Sorry," he said, the smile broadening. A gloved hand dabbed at Scott's sleeve. "Didn't mean to mess up your outfit."

Scott shot him a sharp look and refused to rise to the provocation. The savage wasn't sorry at all. "Can't be helped," he said, curtly.

The peacock inclined his head and wriggled his shoulders until he was firmly jammed in the seat between Scott and the silently-suffering priest. "Still," he said. "Those is mighty fine duds. Sure is a shame to get them all over dirt."

Scott managed a thin smile. He was not going to rise to the ridicule of some bumptious yokel, who, from his words and accent, was an uneducated lout. Despite the prickle of unease that this could escalate further, he raised his book, pointedly, and buried himself in Crusoe's dilemma over the two defaulting sailors.

_...begged the captain to take them on board, though he hanged them immediately. Upon this, the captain pretended to have no power without me; but after some difficulty, and after their solemn promises of amendment, they were taken on board, and were, some time after, soundly whipped and pickled; after which they proved very honest and quiet fellows._

Beside him, the rose-pink peacock chuckled softly, tipped his hat down over his eyes, crossed his arms over his chest and seemed to go to sleep, relaxed and boneless against the swaying of the little coach. Scott sat tensely beside him and all the time he pretended to read his book, he thought he could feel that intense gaze on him, weighing him up and laughing; but every time he looked up, expecting to meet amused blue eyes, all he saw was the tipped down hat and the line of a strong jaw below it.

He hadn't felt this uneasy since the Indians on the plain; and, he suspected, for entirely the same reason. The sense of difference, the sense of danger, disoriented him.

He didn't think that this was his place. This wasn't the place of Scott Garrett Lancer, gentleman of Boston.

.

.

Morro Coyo was as dusty as Stockton, but there the resemblance ended. The stage didn't come to a halt on any old spot on a busy main street, but drew into a sort of plaza or square lined with adobe buildings—white or grey or a sandy earthy colour—interspersed with the wooden-fronted stores and offices Scott had grown used to in Stockton. Morro Coyo felt different, more Spanish, particularly in architecture. The huge, decorative church that stood at one side of the square was in a style like nothing Scott had ever seen before. It was massive and imposing and an inescapable reminder of California's Mexican-Spanish heritage.

Scott took this in with one glance, wondering if he'd spot his father in the people waiting in the square or walking or riding through it. He couldn't tell, he realised, feeling the familiar sense of resentment and frustration. He couldn't tell. His father might be that tall man with dark hair crossing the plaza towards a building with a Stockton and Sacramento Bank sign hanging from it, or that grey-haired man leaning against the posts of the sidewalk outside what looked to be a cafe of some kind, or the man loading a wagon outside a store with _Baldomero's Emporium_ written above the door in florid script. He didn't know. His father could be any one of them, or none of them, for all he knew.

Frustrated, he turned his back on the square and concentrated on getting his valises down from the top of the coach unscratched and undamaged. Murdoch Lancer was going to have to make the first approach; Scott certainly wasn't going to go up to every middle-aged man in the square and ask if he were his father. Scott had dutifully telegraphed confirmation of his arrival time to Dr Jenkins of Green River and his father had absolutely no excuse for not being one of those middle-aged men in the square. None at all.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as the rose-pink peacock took his gun back and slid it into the holster tied very low down on his right hip, and hefted down the saddle.

"Mister Lancer?" asked a voice. A young voice. A girl's voice.

"Yes," said Scott, turning, just as the peacock said something that, impossible as it was, sounded like _That's me._

She was about sixteen, Scott thought, the young woman who had asked. She was wearing—good grief, what was she wearing? Something that Barbara or Julie may have worn to a costume ball, he thought, if they were going as milkmaids; and then almost immediately he repented of his unkindness. It wasn't fair to make her pay penance, however unconscious, for the absent and neglectful Murdoch Lancer. She was dressed in the same style as every other woman he could see in the street, and with more girlish prettiness than most.

She frowned at them. "I'm sorry. Which one of you spoke?"

"I did," said Scott, and this time the peacock's identical response was unmistakable. Astonished, he turned and glared before forcing himself to return his attention to the girl.

"You're Johnny," said the girl to the peacock

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Then you must be Scott Lancer!"

Scott could only stare.

"No, Ma'am. He's no Lancer." The cowboy took a step towards Scott, pushing the stage door closed as he came. "My mother only had one kid, and that was me."

Scott turned his head, annoyed now at what had to be the most elaborate practical joke he'd ever come across. "Likewise!" he snapped.

"Well, we didn't expect you both at the same time, but actually you're right. It's Mister Lancer that had two."

"Two what?" demanded Scott.

"Wives," said the girl. "And sons. You two."

The rose-pink peacock looked Scott up and down and laughed, quietly. But he looked, briefly, as though Scott were as great a surprise to him as he was to Scott, and as Scott could aver, that surprise was complete and almost overwhelming.

And it certainly wasn't welcome.

.

.

"We'll be at Lancer soon," said the girl.

Scott was so bemused that he barely spared a second or two to be cynical about what sort of man called his land after himself; Lancer was the place, it seemed, as well as the man. His father... _their_ father, his and Johnny's father, was evidently not a man of overweening modesty and self-doubt.

Scott was so busy trying to (metaphorically) catch his breath that he didn't say much on the way to the Lancer ranch. Instead he tried to work Johnny out and how Johnny fitted into Murdoch Lancer's life and into Scott's life, and who in heaven's name had his mother been? And had his grandfather known about him and yet said nothing?

He and the peacock—Johnny—hadn't talked much while two cowboys who seemed to have escorted the girl had put Scott's valises and Johnny's saddle into the wagon. Johnny had looked Scott up and down again.

"Well," he'd drawled. "I guess you didn't grow up around these parts neither." There was a measureable pause. "Brother."

Neither? How many sons had Murdoch Lancer abandoned, anyway?

"I'm from Boston." Scott could give pause for pause. "Brother."

"That's way east of here, right? Figures. I grew up around the border." Johnny had paused, mouth curving into that slight, insincere smile again. "That's way south of here."

"Could have just as easily been north," Scott had said, stung. "Except you don't sound very Canadian."

The insincere smile had broadened. "Guess I don't, at that," Johnny had agreed, and got uncomplainingly into the back of the wagon, leaving Scott to hand the girl up into the seat and join her there. For some obscure reason, Scott felt aggrieved by that exchange. He couldn't tell why—but the for pauses, it had been fatuous enough. The slight smile on the peacock's face was infuriating.

The girl drove the wagon competently. Teresa O'Brien was the daughter of the ranch's dead foreman: murdered about six months previously, she said, the same time as Murdoch Lancer was shot. She didn't elaborate, and Scott, whose mind was reeling too hard at the prospect of a brother to do more than register the fact that his father had been shot by someone, just like the sheriff mentioned at supper at Merced—_My God, were they living in one of those wretched dime novels?_—didn't press her when she said that his father wanted to make the explanations himself. He was lost for a few minutes when she revealed that she had grown up on Lancer, when he realised that she knew his father and he didn't, and for a moment the old anger and resentment warred with the new bewilderment he felt about his unexpected brother – his brother! – riding in the back of the wagon.

_My brother_, thought Scott, still trying to put some edges on that amazing notion. _He doesn't look anything like me_.

He tried to listen to the girl while wondering if his brother, if Johnny, were older than he was or younger. Younger, he thought, although he didn't think that there was much in it; no more than two or three years, perhaps. His grandfather had to have known… for a second or two, Scott was tempted to put his head in his hands and groan aloud, but Harlan's training and dislike of theatricals held true. His grandfather had to have known, and said nothing, and Scott just didn't know what to make of that.

_Does he look like our father?_

Scott turned his head to look at Johnny for about the twentieth time, but mostly Johnny kept his head down, seemingly intent on staring at his boots. Scott, frustrated and getting angry, looked beyond him to where the two... what was it Miss O'Brien had called them? Faqueroes, or something? Some Spanish word for cowboys, anyway, and the two of them rode behind the wagon like guards. Both were watching Johnny intently. Johnny appeared to be ignoring them as well as ignoring Scott and he did his ignoring very well.

Once, when Miss O'Brien got a little sentimental about Murdoch Lancer's paternal feelings and how delighted he'd be to see them—"But he won't tell you that or show it," she warned—Scott's anger that this chit knew his father, really knew him when he had nothing of Murdoch Lancer at all, threatened to overcome his good manners. He looked back just as Johnny twisted his head and their gazes met. Scott's breath caught in his throat. Johnny's face was expressionless, but his eyes were bright with an anger that was almost incandescent. Scott realised that Johnny was fairly thrumming with it, that the fury was barely under control. Johnny looked away quickly, absorbed in his boots again.

Scott looked away himself, not least because he didn't any have answers for the questions in those angry blue eyes. Only Murdoch Lancer had answers. All Scott had was an anger as great as Johnny's own.

The girl drew the wagon to a halt on the side of a steep rise before Scott could think of anything to say. "There it is," she said. "As far as the eye can see. The most beautiful place in whole wide world… Lancer."

Scott stood up and could only stare out across a wide flat-bottomed valley to the mauve-blue mountains on the horizon, and see the green pastures, the rivers and a large pond, the cattle grazing in the middle distance. And sitting four-square in the middle of it all, a grand white house in an unfamiliar style, but big and substantial and rich, with gardens and barns and what looked like a small village in a field behind. This was no poor man's hut, made like Crusoe's from the mud he laboured in. This was... this was something that Scott was having a hard time taking in.

The wagon rocked slightly as Johnny stood up as if to see better. Scott turned to look at him. All he could see was Johnny's profile, but he saw that Johnny's mouth tightened until his lips were no more than a thin line. The fingers of Johnny's right hand tapped out a restless little pattern against the grips of the pistol at his hip, patterns that spoke of anger and something more. Distress, maybe.

Neither of them said anything.

Scott was aware of the girl, Teresa, watching them expectantly, her expression eager and open. He sat back down and looked forward, setting his shoulders into the stiff carriage he'd been taught in the Cavalry. Beside him, the girl sighed slightly and slapped the reins, getting the horses moving down the long winding road that led down the bluff to the valley below. She kept giving him little sideways glances, but he stared fixedly at the ears of the nearside horse. Behind them, Johnny was silent and brooding.

Scott looked down into his lap, and watched as the Garret hands he was so proud of clenched and unclenched. Not Robinson Crusoe, then. Whatever had kept Murdoch Lancer from bothering with his son, it wasn't hard, relentless work and poverty. Scott couldn't imagine what the reason was.

It had to be something to do with him, after all.

.

.

The road was little more than two parallel wheel ruts, dug like balding lines into the grasses, rough and uncomfortable. The potholes were filled with little stones, pounded down hard, but still the wagon jolted every foot of the way. Scott raised his head when they reached level ground at the foot of the hillside and started across the level valley bottomlands, the road straight as a die now but barely more than a scar on the land. He blinked at the huge adobe arch spanning the road with the Lancer name incised into it… well, no, his father didn't suffer from lack of self esteem. He supposed it was all of a piece with calling your ranch after yourself.

Now they were almost there, Scott saw that all was not well at Lancer. Close to, the house was even more solid and imposing than it had looked from the road back on the top of the bluff. It had looked to sit peacefully in the spring green meadows from there, the scene almost idyllic, but as the wagon neared the house Scott saw unmistakable signs that something was amiss. Where it cut through the fences of the paddocks near the house, the road was blocked by an old wagon and a group of armed men stood around it, watching them approach. Scott, staring, caught a glimpse of another man standing on the house's roof, waving his hat, a rifle in the crook of his arm.

Scott straightened in the wagon seat, feeling the warning prickle at the back of his neck. There was a wariness about the place, a preparedness for trouble that he hadn't seen for years, not since he was a raw lieutenant leading raids against the enemy. It had been a long time since he'd felt so wary and on edge, back in the days when his life and that of his men had depended on reading situations right. He thought he was reading this one. His grandfather had been right to be suspicious of Murdoch Lancer's motives; it was obvious that the shooting the girl had mentioned hadn't been the climax of whatever was going on here.

"Huh," said Johnny, very quietly, from behind him.

Scott twisted to meet his brother's very blue eyes. Johnny glanced from him to the man on the roof, to the now scurrying group of cowhands moving the old wagon out of the way, to the two ranch hands riding guard behind the wagon. When his gaze returned to meet Scott's, he was poker-faced, giving nothing away of what he thought. Scott nodded and after a second or two, the corner of Johnny's mouth lifted and he nodded back before his expression smoothed back into a cold, aloof impassivity in which only those extraordinary eyes seemed alive.

Scott felt a fleeting sense of satisfaction; they were on the same page then, he and this brother of his. He had no idea what the page was, though. He wasn't so sure about Johnny. Johnny might know.

As soon as the old wagon had been manhandled out of the way, Miss O'Brien slapped the reins and got their own wagon moving again. The men crowded over to one side of the road. Most of them were olive-skinned Mexicans wearing the same sort of clothes that Johnny did; bright shirts and dark pants with the silver buttons down the sides, and the short-waisted jackets. His brother—was that actually getting easier to say and think?—wasn't alone in being a peacock, then. It was evidently the fashion of the country.

The cowboys whistled and yelled and waved their hats as Miss O'Brien drove through the gap. Scott, brought up to understand his obligations to dependents and to meet them with grace, and realising that the arrival of sons might be seen as a special occasion, gave them nods and a smile. The smile grew tight when he realised that the main focus was on Johnny, who just stared back at the group with, so far as Scott could tell, a face that still lacked any expression whatsoever.

When the wagon lurched to a stop outside the imposing carved door of the house, Scott's stomach lurched with it. He swallowed hard, biting back the sudden acid choke in his throat, annoyed at his own apprehension. It made him slower at getting down from the wagon than he should have been, and one of the Mexican cowhands, an older man, was already at the side of it, arms raised to lift Miss O'Brien down. Johnny jumped down behind them, making the wagon rock.

"Thanks, Cipriano," said Miss O'Brien.

"Did all go well, Señorita? You had no trouble in town?"

"No. It was very quiet. We didn't see anything of them." She smiled brightly and indicated Scott and Johnny. "As you see, both came! They were both on the stage."

"I see," said the man.

"This is Cipriano Roldán," said Miss O'Brien. "He's segundo here and Mister Lancer's right hand man."

Cipriano had very dark eyes, appraising and rather severe. He nodded at each of them but Scott had the feeling that his gaze lingered on Johnny for a instant longer. "Señor Scott. Señor Juanito—"

"Johnny," said that worthy, and there was a sharpness under the drawl.

The severe dark eyes narrowed before Cipriano nodded. "Señor Johnny," he amended. "You are very welcome, Señors."

"I'm pleased to make your acquaintance," said Scott, shaking hands and wondering what a segundo was. He remembered enough of his Latin to think that it had to be derived from secundus, second. Second in command at the ranch, he assumed; something that accorded with the air of authority and Miss O'Brien's words.

Johnny had turned slowly in place while Scott was being polite, taking in the entire scene: house, gardens, pastures... his right hand brushed against the butt of the gun on his hip. When he came to halt, he nodded back at Cipriano, but he didn't offer to shake hands. Ostentatiously, he looked up at the man on the roof and the group of cowboys moving the wagon-cum-gate back into position. The smile he gave Cipriano was no more than a cold twist of the lips, not reaching his eyes. His eyes were colder still.

Cipriano's mouth twitched in some sort of acknowledgement, almost an answering smile. Scott, getting irritated that whatever was being unsaid was both significant and incomprehensible, took a step towards Johnny; but before he could speak, Cipriano did.

"The Patrón will explain. He is waiting in the hacienda." He half-turned to go, then paused. "He has been waiting for a very long time," he said, over his shoulder. "A lifetime. Do not keep him waiting any longer, Señors."

Scott clamped his jaw shut to stop himself from saying something inappropriate in front of strangers and servants and pointing out the fault could hardly be laid at his door. Johnny moved until he was at Scott's shoulder. He stood and watched as Cipriano walked away, before glancing up at Scott—he was a couple of inches shorter—the cold smile fading.

"Must have bin waiting for you, Boston," he said, and turned abruptly to follow Miss O'Brien to the very imposing door.

Scott followed, biting back the irritation. He knew better than to allow this kind of thing to get in the way of a social duty. He had a very important interview to get through… he stopped dead just inside the doorway as the realisation came, and he had to wonder at why it had taken him so long. It wouldn't happen. All those imagined reunions, the tall shape coming to put hands on his shoulders, the remorseful voice saying _My son, my son!_—none of that was going to happen. It couldn't happen, not with this unaccountable brother there to witness it.

"Damn," he said, very softly.

Johnny heard. The side of his mouth quirked up in that little smile that Scott couldn't help feel was understanding, for all its smugness irritated him. He realised that this homecoming couldn't be what Johnny had expected, either. They both were disconcerted, then, wrong-footed by the other's unaccountable existence.

"He's waiting in the Great Room," said Miss O'Brien, and Scott could tell the words had to be capitalised. She paused on the step, one hand outstretched to touch the carved oak door. She hesitated, biting at her lower lip, worrying at it, looking nervous for the first time. "Listen," she said in a little rush. "We're all really, really glad you came. So very glad. He may not… I don't know… please be patient and know that all of us are very glad. All of us."

Scott smiled with a thin politeness and Johnny glanced down at her. "Uh-huh," he said.

She sighed, perhaps a little exasperated with their lack of enthusiasm and pushed open the door. "The Great Room's through there," she said, gesturing to a pair of closed arched doors to her right, and disappeared into the house, passing the doors and vanishing into the shadows beyond the staircase in front of them, calling for someone called Maria.

Neither of them moved to follow her. Instead, Johnny turned to face Scott.

"You older'n me, you reckon?" he asked. "I mean, are you the first one, or am I?"

"I don't know," said Scott. "My grandfather never mentioned you. He never said if my… our father was married before he met my mother." He reviewed what he did know of his father. "I think I must be," he said. "I think he married my mother soon after he arrived in America. You look younger than me, too."

"My mama didn't mention you, neither." Johnny took another of those all-embracing looks around the yard. "I was born here," he said, suddenly.

Scott let his mouth close on all the things he would like to say about that, about people like this… this brother of his and Miss O'Brien who had been born on this land when he'd been born somewhere else, somewhere that was not here as if he hadn't been worthy of being born on the ranch, on Lancer.

"Then definitely you came after me," he said, keeping his tone as disinterested as he could manage. "But you weren't brought up here, either." He felt some satisfaction about that.

Johnny shook his head, but he didn't seem to be denying Scott's conclusion about their relative ages. "I don't underst—" He chopped the word off, and took a deep breath. His darkly tanned face was expressionless again, and Scott wondered if he'd practiced it in front of a mirror until it was perfect and null. "Well," Johnny said, and the drawl was even more pronounced, "I guess the old man's still waitin' on us. If you're the eldest, it's more seemly you go first." He gestured to the doors and sketched out a half-bow. That irritating half-smile was back.

Scott didn't see what might be gained by hesitating. This had to be done. It was going to be even less satisfactory than the worst of his imaginings, but it had to be got over. In the cavalry, they said to get over the heavy ground as fast and as lightly as possible; to hesitate was to mire down the horses. He squared his shoulders and walked into his father's house before his horse mired irretrievably.

He was struck at once by how cool it was inside the thick walls, and how quiet. He could hear the slow, ponderous ticking of a clock somewhere in the distance. He was conscious of Johnny close behind him.

He licked suddenly dry lips and looked at Johnny. His brother shrugged and waited for him to take the lead. There was no help there.

He took off his hat, raised a hand, and knocked. There was a rumble of a voice beyond, and after one more glance at Johnny, whose hat was still very firmly on his head, he opened both doors and walked down three steps into the room to meet his father for the first time, keeping his back as straight as if he sat in his cavalry saddle on inspection.

Murdoch Lancer stood up from behind a huge desk, and stared at them. He stared at Scott and he stared at Johnny, and they stared right back.

Murdoch Lancer had to be the tallest man Scott had ever seen, six and a half feet if he were an inch, and broad with it. He made Scott feel small. He had to make Johnny feel small, because Scott half-sensed Johnny drawing himself up and straightening his shoulders to stand taller.

He didn't look like either of them. Scott could see little of himself in that huge frame and nothing of Johnny, either; thankfully nothing of Johnny, who was dark and quick like a flame, with none of Murdoch Lancer's bulk. Scott wasn't sure why he was relieved by that.

Murdoch Lancer looked from one to other again, his expression something like Johnny's: both were unreadable. He nodded and straightened up, reaching for a cane to support himself. He opened his mouth, and Scott's breath caught in his throat. This was it, this was it at last. At last Murdoch Lancer would have something to say to his son—to his sons. Beside him, Scott felt Johnny tense. His heart felt as though it would thud its way out of his chest with the tension.

Murdoch Lancer spoke.

"Drink?" he said.

.

End

22,508 words

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The version in which Scott's train journey is illustrated with pictures taken from contemporary guidebooks and travellers' accounts is at my website www-celestialdome-com (you'll have to replace the - with . fanfiction-dot-net refuses to allow me to put in real URLs). When you've navigated your way to the Lancer fanfiction there and found Fancy Dan, Part 2 covers the train journey. There's also a full itinerary with train times etc and a note about Charles Nordhoff.

**BE WARNED** – all the Lancer stories on my website are gen stories, but those relating to Battlestar Galactica (BSG) and Stargate Atlantis (SGA) are slash fiction, that is concerned with the relationship between two gay men, and some are explicitly erotic. Just be aware of that if you navigate away from the Lancer pages.


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